Atlantis Found

1

The waning stars in the early-morning sky blazed like a theater marquee when seen from 9,000 feet above sea level. But it was the moon that had a ghostly look about it as Luis Marquez stepped from his little wooden frame house. It wore a curious orange halo that he had never seen before. He peered at the odd phenomenon for a few moments before walking across the yard to his 1973 Chevy Cheyenne 4X4 pickup truck.

He had dressed in his work clothes and slipped quietly out of the house so as not to wake his wife and two daughters. His wife, Lisa, would have gladly gotten up and fixed breakfast and a sandwich for his lunch pail, but he insisted that 4:00 A.M. was too early for anyone but a mental case to be roaming around in the dark.

Marquez and his family lived simply. With his own hands, he had remodeled the house that had been built in 1882. His children went to school in nearby Telluride, and what he and Lisa couldn't buy in the booming resort ski town, they brought home during monthly shopping trips to the larger ranch community of Montrose, sixty-seven miles to the north.

His routine was never complete until he lingered over his coffee and stared around what was now a ghost town. Under the spectral light from the moon, the few buildings that still stood looked like tombstones in a cemetery.

Following the discovery of gold-bearing rock in 1874, miners poured into the San Miguel Valley and built a town they called Pandora, after the Greek fairy tale about a beautiful girl and her box full of mysterious spirits. A banking interest in Boston bought up the mining claims, financed the mine's operation, and constructed a large ore-processing plant only two miles above the more famous mining town of Telluride.

They'd called the mine the Paradise, and soon Pandora became a small company town of two hundred citizens with its own post office. The houses were neatly painted, with mowed green lawns and white fences, and although Pandora was set in a box canyon with only one way in and out, it was not isolated. The road to Telluride was well maintained, and the Rio Grande Southern Railroad ran a spur line into town to haul passengers and supplies to the mine and the processed ore across the Continental Divide to Denver.

There were those who swore the mine was cursed. The human cost of extracting fifty million dollars' worth of gold over forty years was high. A total of twenty-eight hard-rock miners had died inside the damp and forbidding shafts- fourteen in one disaster alone- while close to a hundred were maimed for life because of freak accidents and cave-ins.

Before the old-timers who had moved down the road and resided in Telluride died off, they'd claimed that the ghost of one of the dead miners could be heard moaning throughout the ten miles of empty shafts that honeycombed the steep, ominous gray cliffs that rose nearly 13,000 feet into the lazy blue skies of Colorado.

By 1931, all the gold that could be profitably processed from the ore with the aid of chemicals was exhausted. Played out, the Paradise Mine was shut down. Over the next sixty-five years, it became only a memory and a slowly healing scar on the panoramic landscape. Not until 1996 had its haunted shafts and tunnels heard the tread of boots and the clang of a pickax again.

Marquez shifted his stare onto the mountain peaks. A four-day storm had come and gone the week before, adding four feet of snow to the already packed slopes. The increasing air temperatures that accompanied the spring turned the snow into the consistency of mushy mashed potatoes. It was the prime avalanche season. Conditions were extremely hazardous in the high country, and skiers were warned not to wander from the established ski runs. As far as Marquez knew, no major snowslide had ever struck the town of Pandora. He was secure in knowing his family was safe, but he ignored the risk to himself every time he made the drive up the steep icy road in winter and worked alone deep in the bowels of the mountain. With the coming of warm days, a snow slide was an event waiting to happen.

Marquez had seen an avalanche only once in his years on the mountain. The sheer magnitude of its beauty and power as it swept rocks, trees, and snow down a valley in great clouds, along with the rumbling sound of thunder, was something he had never forgotten.

Finally, he set his hard hat on his head, slipped behind the wheel of the Chevy pickup, and started the engine, letting it idle for a couple of minutes to warm. Then he began cautiously driving up the narrow, unpaved road that led to the mine that once was the leading gold producer in the state of Colorado. His tires had made deep ruts in the snow after the last storm. He drove carefully as the road wound higher up the mountain. Very quickly, the drop-off along the edge stretched several hundred feet to the base. One uncontrolled skid and rescuers would be untangling Marquezs broken body from his mangled pickup truck on the rocks far below.

Local people thought him foolish for buying up the claims to the old Paradise Mine. Any gold worth extracting was long gone. And yet, except for a Telluride banker, no one would have dreamed that Marquezs investment had made him a rich man. His profits from the mine were shrewdly invested in local real estate, and with the boom of the ski resort he had realized nearly two million dollars.

Marquez was not interested in gold. For ten years, he had prospected around the world for gemstones. In Montana, Nevada, and Colorado, he had prowled the old abandoned gold and silver mines searching for mineral crystals that could be cut into precious gems. Inside one tunnel of the Paradise Mine, he discovered a vein of rose-pink crystals in what the old miners had considered worthless rock. The gemstone in its natural state, Marquez recognized, was rhodochrosite, a spectacular crystal found in various parts of the world in shades of pink and deep red.

Rhodochrosite is seldom seen in cut or faceted form. Large crystals are in great demand by collectors, who have no desire to see them sliced to pieces. Clean, clear gems from the Paradise Mine that had been cut into flawless stones of eighteen carats were very expensive. Marquez knew he could retire and spend the rest of his life in style, but as long as the vein continued, he was determined to keep picking the stones from the granite until they petered out.

He stopped his battered old truck with its scratched and dented fenders and stepped out in front of a huge rusty iron door with four different chains attached to four different locks. Inserting keys the size of a man's palm, he unsnapped the locks and spread the chains. Then he took both hands and tugged the great door open. The moon's rays penetrated a short distance down a sloping mine shaft and revealed a pair of rails that stretched off into the darkness.

He fired up the engine mounted on a large portable generator, then pulled a lever on a junction box. The mine shaft was suddenly illuminated under a series of exposed light bulbs that trailed down the shaft for a hundred yards before gradually growing smaller, until they became tiny glimmers in the distance. An ore cart sat on the rail tracks, attached to a cable that led to a winch. The cart was built to last, and the only sign of hard use was the rust on the sides of the bucket.

Marquez climbed into the bucket and pressed a button on a remote control. The winch began to hum and play out the cable, allowing the ore cart to roll down the rails, propelled by nothing more than gravity. Going underground was not for the fainthearted or the claustrophobic. The confining shaft barely allowed clearance for the ore bucket. Timbers bolted together like doorframes, known as a cap and post, were spaced every few feet to shore up the roof against cave-ins. Many of the timbers had rotted badly, but others were as solid and sound as the day they were set in place by miners who had long since passed on. The ore car descended the sloping shaft at a rapid rate, coming to a stop 1,200 feet into the depths. At this level there was a constant trickle of water falling from the roof of the tunnel.

Taking a backpack and his lunch pail, Marquez climbed from the car and walked over to a vertical shaft that fell away into the lower reaches of the old Paradise Mine until it reached the 2,200-foot level. Down there, the main drift and crosscut tunnels spread into the granite like spokes on a wheel. According to old records and underground maps, there were almost a hundred miles of tunnels under and around Pandora.

Marquez dropped a rock into the yawning blackness. The sound of a splash came within two seconds.

Soon after the mine closed down and the pumps at the pumping station below the base of the mountain were turned off, the lower levels had flooded. Over time, water had risen to within fifteen feet of the 1,200-foot level, where Marquez worked the rhodochrosite vein. The slowly rising water, spurred on during a particularly heavy wet season in the San Juans, told him that it would be only a matter of a few weeks before it reached the top of the old shaft and spilled over into the main tunnel, spelling the end of his gemstone-mining operation.

Marquez set his mind on extracting as many stones as he could in the brief time he had left. His days became longer as he struggled to remove the red crystals with nothing but his miner's pick and a wheelbarrow to carry the ore to the bucket for the ride up to the mine's entrance.

As he walked through the tunnel, he stepped around old rusting ore cars and drills left by the miners when they had deserted the mine. There had been no market for the equipment, since nearby mines were closing down one by one at the same time. It was all simply cast aside and left where it was last used.

Seventy-five yards into the tunnel, he came to a narrow cleft in the rock just wide enough for him to slip through. Twenty feet beyond was the rhodochrosite lode he was mining. A light bulb had burned out on the string hanging from the roof of the cleft, and he replaced it with one of several he kept in a backpack. Then he took his pick in hand and began to attack the rock that was embedded with the gemstones. A dull red in their natural state, the crystals looked like dried cherries in a muffin.

A dangerous overhang of rock protruded just above the cleft. If he was to continue to work safely without being crushed by a rockfall, Marquez had no choice but to blast it away. Using a portable pneumatic drill, he bored a hole into the rock. Then he inserted a small charge of dynamite and wired it to a handheld detonator. After moving around the corner of the cleft and into the main tunnel, he pushed down on the plunger. A dull thump echoed through the mine, followed by the sound of tumbling rock and a blanket of dust that rolled into the main tunnel.

Marquez waited a few minutes for the dust to settle before carefully entering the natural cleft. The overhang was gone. It had become a pile of rocks on the narrow floor. He retrieved the wheelbarrow and began removing the debris, dumping it a short distance up the tunnel. When the cleft was finally cleared, he looked up to make certain that no threatening section of the overhang remained.

He stared in wonder at a hole that had suddenly appeared in the roof above the crystal lode. He aimed the light atop his hard hat upward. The beam continued through the hole into what appeared to be a chamber beyond. Suddenly consumed by curiosity, he ran back up the tunnel for fifty yards, where he found the rusty remains of a six-foot iron ladder among the abandoned mining equipment. Returning inside the cleft, he propped up the ladder, climbed the rungs, and pried loose several rocks from the rim of the hole, widening it until he could squeeze through. Then he thrust his upper torso inside the chamber and twisted his head from shoulder to shoulder, sweeping the beam of his hard hat's light around the darkness.

Marquez found himself staring into a room hewn in the rock. It looked to be a perfect cube approximately fifteen by fifteen feet, with the same distance separating the floor and roof. Strange markings were cut into the sheer, smooth walls. This definitely was not the work of nineteenth-century miners. Then, abruptly, the beam of his hard hat's light struck a stone pedestal and glinted on the object it supported.

Marquez froze in shock at the ungodly sight of a black skull, its empty eye sockets staring directly at him.

2

The pilot banked the United Airlines Beechcraft twin-engine plane around a pair of cotton-fluffed clouds and began his descent toward the short runway on a bluff above the San Miguel River. Though he had flown in and out of the little Telluride airport a hundred times, it was still a chore for him to keep his concentration on landing the aircraft and not on the incredible aerial view of the spectacular snowcapped San Juan Mountains. The serene beauty of the jagged peaks and slopes, mantled with snow under a vivid blue sky, was breathtaking.

As the plane dropped lower into the valley, the slopes of the mountains rose majestically on both sides. They appeared so close that it seemed to the passengers as if the aircraft's wings would brush the aspen trees on the rocky outcroppings. Then the landing gear dropped, and a minute later the wheels thumped and screeched as they touched the narrow asphalt runway.

The Beechcraft carried only nineteen passengers, and the unloading went quickly. Patricia O'Connell was the last one to step to the ground. Taking the advice of friends who had flown into the resort town for the skiing, she had asked for a rear seat so she could enjoy the fantastic view without its being blocked by one of the aircraft's wings.

At 9,000 feet in altitude, the air was thin but incredibly pure and refreshing. Pat inhaled deeply as she walked from the plane to inside the terminal building. As she passed through the door, a short, stocky man with a shaved head and a dark brown beard walked up to her.

"Dr. O'Connell?"

"Please call me Pat," she replied. "You must be Dr. Ambrose."

"Please call me Tom," he said, with a warm smile. "Did you have a good flight from Denver?"

"It was wonderful. A little rough coming over the mountains, but the beautiful scenery easily offset any discomfort."

"Telluride is a lovely spot," he said wistfully. "There are times I wish I could live here."

"I don't imagine there are many archaeological sites to study for a man of your experience."

"Not this high," he said. "The ancient Indian ruins are at much lower altitudes."

Dr. Thomas Ambrose may not have fit the stereotype of an eminent anthropologist, but he was one of the most respected people in the field. A professor emeritus at Arizona State University, he was an accomplished researcher, meticulous with written reports of his on-site investigations. Now in his late fifties- Pat guessed him to be ten years younger- he could boast of thirty years spent on the trail of early man and his cultures throughout the Southwest.

"Dr. Kidd was very mysterious over the phone. He offered almost no information at all about the discovery."

"And neither will I," said Ambrose. "It's best that you wait and see for yourself."

"How did you become involved with this find?" she asked.

"The right place at the right time. I was on a skiing vacation with an old girlfriend when I received a call from a colleague at the University of Colorado, asking if I'd take a look at the artifacts a miner reported finding. After a quick study of the site, I realized that I was in over my head."

"I find that hard to believe of a man with your reputation."

"Unfortunately, my area of expertise does not include epigraphy. And that's where you come in. The only one I know personally who specializes in deciphering ancient inscriptions is Dr. Jerry Kidd at Stanford. He wasn't available, but recommended you highly to take his place."

Ambrose turned, as the outside doors to the luggage drop were opened and the terminal ticket ladies who doubled as luggage handlers began throwing suitcases onto a sloping metal tray. "The big green one is mine," said Pat, thankful a man was there to tote her fifty-pound bag, which was packed with reference books.

Ambrose grunted but said nothing as he manhandled the heavy bag out to a jeep Cherokee that he'd parked in the lot outside the terminal. Pat hesitated, before entering the car, to absorb the magnificent view of the pine and aspen forests ascending the slopes of Mount Wilson and Sunshine Peak across the valley. As she stood enthralled with the panoramic scene, Ambrose took a moment to study her. Pat's hair was a radiant red and cascaded to her waist. Her eyes were a sage green. She stood as if sculptured by an artist, her weight on her right leg with her left knee turned slightly inward. Her shoulders and arms suggested a build more muscular than most women's, no doubt fashioned by long hours of exercise in a gym. Ambrose guessed her height at five feet eight inches, her weight at a solid 135 pounds. She was a pretty woman, not cute or strikingly beautiful, but he imagined she'd look very desirable when dressed in something more alluring than jeans and a mannish leather jacket.

Dr. Kidd claimed there was no better person than Patricia O'Connell to decipher ancient writings. He had faxed her history, and Ambrose was impressed. Thirty-five years old, with a doctorate in ancient languages from St. Andrews College in Scotland, she taught early linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. Pat had written three well-received books on inscriptions she had deciphered on stones found in different parts of the world. Married and divorced from an attorney, she supported a young daughter of fourteen. A confirmed diffusionist, one who embraced the theory that cultures spread from one to another without being independently created, she firmly believed ancient seafarers had visited American shores many hundreds of years before Columbus.

"I've put you up at a nice bed-and-breakfast in town," said Ambrose. "If you wish, I can drop you off for an hour or so to freshen up."

"No, thank you," Pat said, smiling. "If you don't mind, I'd like to go straight to the site."

Ambrose nodded, took a cellular phone from a coat pocket, and dialed a number. "I'll let Luis Marquez, the owner of the mine, who made the discovery, know that we're coming."

They drove in silence through the heart of Telluride. Pat stared up at the ski slopes of Mountain Village to the south and saw skiers assaulting the steep moguls on the run that dropped to the edge of town. They passed old buildings that had been preserved over the past century, restored and now housing retail stores instead of a sea of saloons. Ambrose pointed to a building on his left. "That's the spot where Butch Cassidy robbed his first bank."

"Telluride must have a rich history."

"It does," replied Ambrose. "Right there in front of the Sheridan Hotel is where William Jennings Bryan gave his famous `cross of gold' speech. And farther up the South Fork Valley was the world's first generating plant, which produced alternating-current electricity for the mines. The plant's equipment was designed by Nikola Tesla."

Ambrose continued through the town of Telluride, busy with the invasion of skiers, and drove into the box canyon to where the paved road ended at Pandora. Pat stared in wonder at the steep cliffs surrounding the old mining town, taking in the beauty of Bridal Veil Falls, which was beginning to cascade with the runoff from the melting snow brought on by the prelude of a warm spring.

They came to a side road that led to the ruins of several old buildings. A van and a jeep painted a bright turquoise were parked outside. A pair of men were wearing wet suits and unloading what looked to Pat like diving equipment. "What can divers possibly be doing in the middle of the mountains of Colorado?" she asked vaguely.

"I stopped and talked to them yesterday," answered Ambrose. "They're a team from the National Underwater and Marine Agency."

"A long way from the sea, aren't they?"

"I was told they're exploring a complex system of ancient waterways that once drained the western flank of the San Juan Mountains. There is a maze of caverns that connect to the old mine tunnels."

Half a mile up the road, Ambrose passed a huge abandoned ore mill, where a large semitruck and trailer were parked beside the San Miguel River below the mouth of another old abandoned mine. Tents had been set up around the vehicles, and several men could be seen wandering about the camp. The sides of the big trailers were painted with words advertising the Geo Subterranean Science Corporation with home offices in Phoenix, Arizona.

"Another bunch of scientists," Ambrose volunteered without being asked. "A geophysical outfit, searching through the old mine shafts with fancy ground-penetrating equipment that is supposed to detect any veins of gold overlooked by the old miners."

"Think they'll find anything?" asked Pat.

Ambrose shrugged. "I doubt it. These mountains have been dug pretty deep."

A short distance later, Ambrose pulled to a stop in front of a picturesque little house and parked next to an old Chevy pickup truck. Marquez and his wife, Lisa, alerted to their coming, came out and greeted them, as Ambrose introduced them to Pat.

"I envy you," said Pat, "living amid such gorgeous scenery."

"Sad to say," said Lisa, "that after a year you don't notice it anymore."

"I don't think I could ever become immune to it."

"Can I get you folks anything? A cup of coffee? A beer?"

"I'm fine," answered Pat. "I would like to see your discovery as soon as it's convenient."

"No problem," said Marquez. "We still have five hours of daylight left. More than enough time for you to see the chamber and get back before dark."

"I'll have dinner waiting," said Lisa. "I thought you might like barbecued elk."

"Sounds wonderful," Pat said, already feeling the pangs of hunger.

Marquez nodded his head at the old truck. "You folks will have a more comfortable ride up to the mine if we take your jeep, Doc."

Fifteen minutes later, they were sitting in the ore cart, making the descent from the portal into the old Paradise Mine. It was a new experience for Pat. She had never entered a mine shaft.

"It feels warmer," she observed, "the deeper we go."

"As a rule of thumb," explained Marquez, "the temperature increases by five degrees every hundred feet you descend into the earth. In the lower levels of the mine that are now flooded, the heat used to be over a hundred degrees."

The ore cart came to a stop. Marquez climbed out and dug into a large wooden toolbox. He handed Pat and Ambrose each a hard hat.

"For falling rock?" asked Pat.

Marquez laughed. "Mostly to keep your scalp from knocking against low timbers."

The dim yellow lights attached to the overhead timbers flickered overhead as they made their way through the damp tunnel with Marquez in the lead. When one of them spoke, the voice sounded hollow against the surrounding rock walls of the tunnel. Pat stumbled more than once on the ties holding the old rusting ore cart rails, but caught herself before falling. She hadn't realized when she'd dressed earlier in the morning, before flying to Telluride, what a wise decision it was to wear a pair of comfortable hiking shoes. After what seemed an hour but was actually only ten minutes, they reached the cleft leading to the chamber and followed Marquez through the narrow passage.

He stopped at the ladder and motioned upward to where a bright light spilled through the opening in the rock ceiling. "I strung lights inside since you visited yesterday, Dr. Ambrose. The sheer walls act as reflectors, so you shouldn't have a problem studying the writing." Then he stood aside and helped Pat up the ladder.

Not having been told what to expect, she was stunned. She felt like Howard Carter when he first viewed King Tuts tomb. Her eyes immediately locked on the black skull, and she reverently approached its pedestal and stared at the smooth surface gleaming under the lights.

"It's exquisite," she murmured admiringly, as Ambrose squeezed through the opening and stood beside her.

"A masterwork," he agreed. "Carved out of obsidian."

"I've seen the Mayan crystal skull that was found in Belize. This one is far more inspiring. The other is crude in comparison."

"They say the crystal skull emits an aura of light, and strange sounds are heard to come from it."

"It must have been lethargic the time I studied it," said Pat, smiling. "It only sat there and stared."

"I can't imagine how many years- generations most likely, without modern tools- it took to polish such an object of beauty from a mineral so brittle. One tap of a hammer and it would shatter into a thousand pieces."

"The surface is so smooth, it's flawless," Pat said softly.

Ambrose swept one hand around the chamber. "This entire chamber is a wonder. The inscriptions on the walls and ceiling must easily have taken five men a lifetime to engrave in the rock, but not before an immense effort was spent polishing the interior surfaces. This chamber alone had to have taken years to carve out of solid granite at this depth. I've measured the dimensions. The four walls, floor, and ceiling enclose a perfect cube. If the interior surfaces are out of alignment or plumb, it's less than one millimeter. Like the classic old mystery novel, we have a drama that took place in a room with no windows or doors."

"The opening in the floor?" Pat asked.

"Blasted by Luis Marquez while excavating for gemstones," replied Ambrose.

"Then how was this chamber created without an entrance and exit?"

Ambrose pointed to the ceiling. "The only hint I could find of an infinitesimal crack around the borders was in the ceiling. I can only assume that whoever constructed this cubicle burrowed down from above and placed a precisely carved slab atop the cubicle."

"For what purpose?"

Ambrose grinned. "The reason why you're here, to find answers."

Pat removed a notepad, a small paintbrush and a magnifying glass from a pack she carried on her belt. She moved close to one wall, gently swept away the dust of centuries from the rock, and peered at the script through the glass. She intently studied the markings for several moments before looking up and staring at the ceiling. Then she looked at Ambrose with a blank expression in her face. "The ceiling appears to be a celestial map of the stars. The symbols are…" She hesitated and stared at Ambrose with a blank expression. "This must be some sort of hoax perpetrated by the miners who dug the tunnel."

"What brought you to that conclusion?" inquired Ambrose.

"The symbols don't bear the slightest resemblance to any ancient writings I've ever studied."

"Can you decipher any of them?"

"All I can tell you is that they are not pictographic like hieroglyphics, or logographic signs that express individual words. Nor do the symbols suggest words or oral syllables. It appears to be alphabetic."

"Then they're a combination of single sounds," offered Ambrose.

Pat nodded in agreement. "This is either some sort of written code or an ingenious system of writing."

Ambrose looked at her intently. "Why do you think this is all a hoax?"

"The inscriptions do not fit any known pattern set down by man throughout recorded history," Pat said in a quiet, authoritative voice.

"You did say ingenious."

Pat handed Ambrose her magnifying glass. "See for yourself. The symbols have a remarkable simplicity. The use of geometric images in combination with single lines is a very efficient system of written communication. That's why I can't believe any of this comes from an ancient culture."

"Can the symbols be deciphered?"

"I'll know after I make tracings and run them through the computer lab at the university. Most ancient inscriptions are not nearly as definite and distinct as these. The symbols appear to have a well-defined structure. The main problem is that we have no other matching epigraphs anywhere else in the world to act as a guide. I'm treading in unknown waters until the computer can make a breakthrough."

"How you doin' up there?" Marquez shouted from the cleft below.

"All done for now," Pat answered. "Do you have a stationer's store in town?"

"Two of them."

"Good. I'll need to buy a ream of tracing paper and some transparent tape to make long sheets I can roll-" She fell silent as a faint rumble issued from the tunnel and the floor of the cubicle trembled beneath their feet.

"An earthquake?" Pat called down to Marquez.

"No," he replied through the hole. "My guess is an avalanche somewhere on the mountain. You and Dr. Ambrose go on about your business. I'll run topside and check it out."

Another tremor shook the chamber with a stronger intensity than the last one.

"Maybe we should go with you," Pat said apprehensively.

"The tunnel support timbers are old, and many are rotten," warned Marquez. "Excessive movement of the rock could cause them to collapse, produce a cave-in. It's safer if you two wait here."

"Don't be long," said Pat. "I feel a touch of claustrophobia coming on."

"Back in ten minutes," Marquez assured her.

As soon as Marquezs footsteps faded from the cleft below, Pat turned to Ambrose. "You didn't tell me your appraisal of the skull. Do you think it ancient or modern?"

Ambrose stared at the skull, a vague look in his eyes. "It would take a laboratory to determine if it was cut and polished by hand or with modern tools. The only fact we know for certain is that this room was not excavated and created by miners. There would have to be an account somewhere of such an extensive project. Marquez assures me that old Paradise Mine records and tunnel maps show nothing indicating a vertical shaft leading to an underground chamber in this particular location. So it must have been excavated prior to 1850."

"Or much later."

Ambrose shrugged his shoulders. "All mining operations were shut down in 1931. A major operation such as this could not have gone unnoticed since then. I'm reluctant to lay my reputation on the line, but I'll state without equivocation that I firmly believe this chamber and the skull are more than a thousand years old, probably much older."

"Perhaps early Indians were responsible," Pat persisted.

Ambrose shook his head. "Not possible. The early Americans built a number of complex stone structures, but an enterprise of this precise magnitude was beyond them. And then you have the inscriptions. Hardly the work of people without a written language."

"This does appear to have the hallmark of a high intelligence," she said softly, her fingertips lightly tracing the symbols in the granite.

With Ambrose at her side, Pat began copying the unusual symbols in a small notebook until she could account for a total of forty-two. Then she measured the depth of the engravings and the distance between the lines and the symbols. The more she examined the apparent wording, the more perplexed she became. There was a mysterious logic about the inscriptions that only a meticulous translation could solve. She was busily taking flash photos of the inscriptions and star symbols in the ceiling when Marquez climbed through the hole in the floor.

"Looks like we're going to be here for a while, folks," he announced. "An avalanche has covered the mine entrance."

"Oh, dear God," muttered Pat.

"Not to fret," Marquez said with a tight grin. "My wife has gone through this before. She'll be aware of our predicament and will have called for help. A rescue unit from town will soon be on its way with heavy equipment to dig us out."

"How long will we be trapped here?" asked Ambrose.

"Hard to say without knowing how much snow is blocking the shaft opening. Could be only a few hours. Might take as long as a day. But they'll work around the clock until they clear away the snow. You can bet on it."

A sense of relief settled over Pat. "Well, then, as long as your lights are still working, I suppose Dr. Ambrose and I can spend the time recording the inscriptions."

The words were barely out of her mouth when a tremendous rumble rose from somewhere deep beneath the chamber. Then the grinding sound of crashing timbers, followed by the deep growl of falling rock, reverberated from the tunnel. A violent rush of air roared through the cleft and into the chamber as they were all pitched headlong onto the rock floor.

Then the lights blinked out.

3

The rumble deep within the mountain echoed ominously from the hidden reaches of the tunnel and slowly faded away into a smothering silence, while unseen in the pitch blackness, dust disturbed by the concussion rolled through the tunnel, into the cleft, and up through the opening of the chamber like an invisible hand. Then came the sounds of coughing as the dust clogged noses and mouths, the grit quickly clinging to their teeth and tongues.

Ambrose was the first to gasp out coherent words. "What in God's name happened?"

"A cave-in," rasped Marquez. "The roof of the tunnel must have collapsed."

"Pat!" Ambrose shouted, feeling around in the darkness. "Are you hurt?"

"No," she managed between fits of coughing. "The breath was knocked out of me, but I'm all right."

He found her hand and helped her to her feet. "Here, take my handkerchief and hold it to your face."

Pat stood quite still as she fought to get a clean breath. "It felt as if the earth exploded beneath my feet."

"Why did the rock suddenly give way?" Ambrose asked Marquez, unable to see him.

"I don't know, but it sounded like a dynamite blast to me."

"Couldn't the aftershock of the avalanche have caused the tunnel to collapse?" asked Ambrose.

"I swear to God, it was dynamite," said Marquez. "I ought to know. I've used enough of it over the years to recognize the sound. I always use low particle-velocity dynamite to minimize ground shock. Someone set off a charge with concentrated powder in one of the tunnels beneath this one. A big one, judging from the shock."

"I thought the mine was abandoned."

"It was. Except for my wife and myself, no one has set foot in here for years."

"But how-"

"Not how, but why?" Marquez brushed by the anthropologist's legs as he crawled on all fours searching for his hard hat.

"Are you saying that someone purposely set off explosives to seal the mine?" Pat asked, bewildered.

"I'll damn well find out if we get out of here." Marquez found his hat, set it over his dust-coated hair, and switched on the little light. "There, that's better."

The little light gave but token illumination inside the chamber. The settling dust had the eerie and forbidding look of a waterfront fog. They all looked like statues under the dust, their faces and clothing the color of the surrounding gray granite.

"I don't care for the way you said `if.' "

"Depends on which side of the cleft the tunnel collapsed. Farther into the mine, we'll be clear. But if the roof fell somewhere between here and the exit shaft, we have a problem. I'll go and take a look."

Before Pat could say another word, the miner had slipped through the hole and the chamber was thrown back into absolute darkness. Ambrose and Pat stood silent in a sea of suffocating blackness, the initial traces of terror and panic seeping into their minds. Less than five minutes had passed before Marquez returned. They could not see his face because of the beam from his hard hat light in their eyes, but they sensed that he was a man who had seen and touched doom.

"I'm afraid the news is all bad," he said slowly. "The cave-in is only a short distance down the tunnel toward the shaft. I estimate that the fall extends a good thirty yards or more. It'll take days, maybe weeks for rescuers to clear the rubble, timbering as they go."

Ambrose stared closely at the miner, searching for any expression of hope. Seeing none, he said, "But they will get us out before we starve?"

"Starving isn't our problem," Marquez said, unable to hide the tone of despair that had crept into his voice. "Water is rising in the tunnel. It's already flooded up to three feet."

It was then Pat saw that Marquezs pants up to his knees were soaking wet. "Then we're trapped in this hellhole with no way out?"

"I didn't say that!" the miner snapped back. "There's a good chance the water will run off into a crosscut tunnel before reaching the chamber."

"But you can't be sure," said Ambrose.

"We'll know in the next few hours," Marquez hedged.

Pat's face was pale and her breath was coming slowly through lips tainted with the dust. She became gripped with cold fear as she heard the first sounds of the water swirling outside the chamber. At first the volume had not been great, but it was increasing rapidly. Her eyes met Ambrose's gaze. He could not hide the dread that was written in his face.

"I wonder," she whispered softly, "what it's like to drown."

The minutes passed like years and the next two hours crawled like centuries as the water rose steadily higher until it surged through the hole in the chamber floor and pooled around their feet. Paralyzed with terror, Pat pressed her back and shoulders against the wall, trying vainly to gain an extra few seconds from the relentless onslaught of the water. She silently prayed that it would miraculously stop before it climbed over their shoulders.

The horror of dying a thousand feet under the earth, smothered in black gloom, was a nightmare too ghastly to accept. She recalled reading about the bodies of cave divers who had become lost in a maze of underwater caverns and been found with their fingers rubbed raw to the bone where they had tried to claw their way through solid rock.

The men stood quiet, their mood somber from the buried solitude. Marquez was unable to believe that some unknown party had tried to murder them. There was no rhyme or reason to such an act, no motive. His conscious thoughts languished on the grief that would soon overcome his family.

Pat thought of her daughter and felt a deep sense of desolation, knowing that she would not be there to see her only child grow to womanhood. It did not seem fair that she would die deep in the bowels of the earth within a bleak and barren chamber, her body never to be found. She wanted to cry, but tears refused to fall.

All conversation died when water reached their knees. It continued rising until it reached their hips. It was ice cold and stabbed their flesh like thousands of tiny nails. Pat began to shiver, and her teeth chattered uncontrollably. Ambrose, recognizing the warning signs of hypothermia, waded over and put his arms around her. It was a kind and thoughtful act, and she felt grateful. She stared in rapt terror at the hideous black water that swirled beneath the yellow glow of Marquezs lamp, reflecting on the cold forbidding surface.

Then suddenly Pat thought she saw something, sensed it actually. "Turn off your light," she murmured to Marquez.

"What?"

"Turn off your light. I think something is down there."

The men were certain that fear had caused her to hallucinate, but Marquez nodded, reached up, and switched off the hard hat's little light. The chamber was immediately thrown into hellish blackness.

"What is it you think you see?" Ambrose asked softly.

"A glow," she murmured.

"I don't see anything," said Marquez.

"You must see it," she said excitedly. "A faint glow in the water."

Ambrose and Marquez peered into the rising water and saw nothing but stygian blackness.

"I saw it. I swear to God, I saw a light shining in the cleft below."

Ambrose held her tighter. "We're alone," he said tenderly. "There is no one else."

"There!" she gasped. "Don't you see?"

Marquez dipped his face under the surface and opened his eyes. And then he saw it, too, a very dim glow coming from the direction of the tunnel. As he held his breath in growing anticipation, it began to brighten as if it was coming closer. He raised his head free of the water and shouted, his voice tinged with horror. "Something is down there. The ghost. It can only be the ghost that is said to wander the mine shafts. No human could be moving through a flooded tunnel."

What strength they had left drained from their bodies. They stared transfixed as the light seemed to rise through the opening into the chamber. Marquez switched his lamp back on as they stood frozen, their eyes staring at the apparition that slowly rose above the surface of the water, wearing a black hood.

Then a hand lifted from the murk, removed a mouthpiece to an air regulator, and raised a diver's face mask over the forehead. A pair of vivid green opaline eyes were revealed under the miner's lamp as the lips spread into a wide smile that displayed an even set of white teeth.

"It would appear," a friendly voice said, "that I have arrived in the proverbial nick of time."

4

Pat could not help but wonder if her mind, numbed by fright and the torment to her body from the frigid water, was playing weird tricks. Ambrose and Marquez stared blankly, unable to speak. Shock was slowly replaced with an overpowering wave of relief at suddenly having company and knowing the stranger was in contact with the world above. Cold fear abruptly evaporated, to be replaced with inspired hope.

"Where in God's name did you come from?" Marquez blurted excitedly.

"The Buccaneer Mine next door," answered the stranger, shining his dive light around the walls of the chamber before focusing its beam on the obsidian skull. "What is this place, a mausoleum?"

"No," answered Pat, "an enigma."

"I recognize you," said Ambrose. "We talked earlier today. You're with the National Underwater and Marine Agency."

"Dr. Ambrose, isn't it? I wish I could say it was a pleasure meeting you again." The stranger looked at the miner. "You must be Luis Marquez, the owner of the mine. I promised your wife I'd get you home in time for dinner. He stared at Pat and grinned slyly. "And the gorgeous lady has to be Dr. O'Connell."

"You know my name?"

"Mrs. Marquez described you," he said simply.

"How in the world did you get here?" Pat asked, still dazed.

"After learning from your sheriff that your mine entrance was covered by an avalanche, my team of NUMA engineers decided to try and reach you through one of the tunnels leading from the Buccaneer Mine to the Paradise. We'd only covered a few hundred yards when an explosion shook the mountain. When we saw water rising in the shafts and flooding both mines, we knew the only way left to reach you was by a diver swimming through the tunnels."

"You swam here from the Buccaneer Mine?" asked Marquez incredulously. "That has to be nearly half a mile."

"Actually, I was able to walk much of the distance before I entered the water," explained the stranger. "Unfortunately, the surge was more than I expected. I was towing a waterproof pack containing food and medical supplies behind me on a line, but it was torn away and lost after a torrent of water swept me against an old drill rig."

"Were you injured?" asked Pat solicitously.

"Black and blue in places I care not to mention."

"It's a miracle you found your way through that maze of tunnels to our exact location," said Marquez.

The stranger held up a small monitor, whose screen glowed an unearthly green. "An underwater computer, programmed with every shaft, crosscut, and tunnel in the Telluride canyon. Because your tunnel was blocked by the cave-in, I had to detour to a lower level, circle around, and travel from the opposite direction. As I was swimming through the tunnel, I caught the dim glimmer of light from your miner's lamp. And here I am."

"Then no one aboveground knows that we were trapped by a cave-in," stated Marquez.

"They know," the diver answered him. "My NUMA team called the sheriff as soon as we realized what happened."

Ambrose's face showed an unhealthy pallor. He failed to display the enthusiasm of the others. "Is there another member of your dive team following you?" he asked slowly.

The diver gave a slight shake of his head. "I'm alone. We were down to our last two tanks of air. I felt it was too risky for more than one man to make the attempt to reach you."

"It seems a waste of time and effort for you to have made the trip. I see little that you can do to save us."

"I may surprise you," the diver said simply.

"There is no way your twin scuba tanks hold enough air to take all four of us back through a labyrinth of flooded tunnels to the world aboveground. And since we'll either drown or die of hypothermia in the next hour, you won't have time to go and bring back help."

"You've very astute, Doctor. Two people might make it back to the Buccaneer Mine, but only two."

"Then you must take the lady."

The diver smiled ironically. "That's very noble of you, my friend, but we're not loading lifeboats on the Titanic."

"Please," begged Marquez. "The water is still rising. Take Dr. O'Connell to safety."

"If it will make you happy," he said, with seeming insensibility. He took Pat by the hand. "Have you ever used scuba gear before?"

She shook her head.

He aimed his dive light at the men. "How about you two?"

"Does it really matter?" said Ambrose solemnly.

"It does to me."

"I'm a qualified diver."

"I guessed as much. And you?"

Marquez shrugged. "I can barely swim."

The diver turned to Pat who was carefully wrapping her camera and notebook in plastic. "You swim alongside me and we'll buddy-breathe by passing the mouthpiece on my air regulator back and forth. I'll take a breath and hand it to you. You take a breath and hand it back. As soon as we drop out of this chamber, grab hold of my weight belt and hang on."

Then he turned back to Ambrose and Marquez. "Sorry to disappoint you, fellows, but if you think you're going to die, forget it. I'll be back for you in fifteen minutes."

"Please make it less." Marquez stared back from a face as gray as the granite. "The water will be over our heads in twenty minutes."

"Then I suggest you stand on tiptoe."

Taking Pat by the hand, the man from NUMA slipped beneath the water and disappeared in the murky water.

Keeping the beam of his dive light aimed ahead in the tunnel, the diver followed one of the illuminated lines displayed on his little computer. Looking up from the tiny monitor, he aimed his dive light ahead into the tunnel and swam toward the forbidding shadows. The water had risen to the roof of the tunnel, and the surge he'd experienced earlier had fallen off. He stroked and kicked his fins mightily through the flooded cavern, dragging Pat behind him.

Stealing a quick glance backward, he saw that her eyes were tightly closed, her hands clinging to his weight belt in a death grip. The eyes never opened, even as the mouthpiece to the air regulator was passed back and forth.

His decision to rely on a simple U.S. Divers' Scan face mask and a standard U.S. Diver's Aquarius scuba air regulator instead of his old reliable Mark II full face mask turned out to be wise. Traveling light made it easier for him to swim nearly half a mile through a maze of underground passages from the Buccaneer Mine, many partially filled with fallen rock and timbers. There were also dry galleries the flooding water had not yet reached, where he had to crawl and walk. Trudging over ore car rails and ties and fallen rock while toting bulky air tanks, buoyancy compensator, various gauges, a knife, and a belt loaded with lead weights was not an easy chore. The water was icy cold, but he stayed warm inside his DUI Norseman dry suit during the passages he was forced to swim. He had chosen the Norseman because it had greater ease of movement when he was out of the water.

The water was turbid and the beam from the dive light, cutting a swath in the liquid void, penetrated only ten feet into the murk. He counted the shoring timbers as they passed, trying to gain a perspective on how far they had traveled. At last the tunnel made a sharp turn and ended in a gallery that led to a vertical shaft. He entered the shaft and felt as if he had been swallowed by an alien monster from the depths. Two minutes later, they broke the surface, and he aimed the dive light into the black above. A horizontal tunnel leading on to the next level of the Paradise Mine beckoned forty feet above.

Pat smoothed the hair from her face and stared wide-eyed at him. It was then he saw that her eyes were a lovely shade of olive green. "We made it," she gasped, coughing and spitting water from her mouth. "You knew about this shaft?"

Holding up the directional computer, he said, "This little gem led the way." He placed her hands on the slimy rungs of a badly rusted ladder leading upward. "Do you think you can make it up to the next level on your own?"

"I'll fly if I have to," said Pat, overjoyed at being free of the hideous chamber and knowing she was still alive, with a chance, albeit a slim one, of eventually becoming a senior citizen.

"As you climb the ladder, pull yourself up with your hands on the vertical bars, and mind you don't step in the center of the rungs. They're old and probably half rusted through. So go carefully."

"I'll make it. I wouldn't dare mess up. Not after you got me this far."

He handed her a small outdoorsman butane lighter. "Take this, find some dry wood from a timber, and start a fire. You've been exposed to the cold water much too long."

As he pulled the dive mask back down over his face and prepared to duck under that water again, her hand suddenly tightened around his wrist. She felt drawn into the opaline green eyes. "You're going back after the others?"

He nodded and threw her a smile of encouragement. "I'll get them out. Don't worry. There's still time."

"You never told me who you are."

"My name is Dirk Pitt," he said. Then, the mouthpiece reinserted, he gave a brief wave and vanished into the murky water.

The water had reached the shoulders of the men in the ancient chamber. The terror of claustrophobia seemed to rise along with the water. All barbs of panic had receded as Ambrose and Marquez quietly accepted their fate in their private Hades deep inside the earth. Marquez chose to fight to the last breath, while Ambrose silently embraced a diehard death. He steeled himself to swim down through the cleft into the tunnel and go until his lungs gave out.

"He's not coming back, is he?" Marquez mumbled.

"Doesn't look like it, or else he won't make it in time. He probably thought it best to give us false hope."

"Funny, I had a gut feeling we could trust the guy."

"Maybe we still can," said Ambrose, seeing what looked like a glowworm approaching from under the water.

"Thank God!" gasped Marquez as the beam from the halogen dive light refracted and danced off the ceiling and walls of the chamber just before Pitt's head broke water. "You came back!"

"Was there ever a doubt?" Pitt asked lightly.

"Where is Pat?" demanded Ambrose, as Pitt's eyes met his through the plate of the dive mask.

"Safe," Pitt said briefly. "There's a dry shaft about eighty feet down the tunnel."

"I know the one," acknowledged Marquez, his words barely intelligible. "It leads to the next level of the Paradise."

Identifying the obvious signs of hypothermia in the miner, the drowsiness, the confusion, Pitt elected to take him instead of Ambrose, who was in the better shape of the two. He had to be quick, because the numbing cold had tightened its grip and was draining the life out of them. "You're next, Mr. Marquez."

"I may panic and pass out when I'm submerged," Marquez moaned.

Pitt gripped him on the shoulder. "Pretend you're floating in the water off Waikiki Beach."

"Good luck," said Ambrose.

Pitt grinned and gave the anthropologist a friendly tap on the shoulder. "Don't go away."

"I'll wait right here."

Pitt nodded at Marquez. "All right, pal, let's do it."

The trip went smoothly. Pitt put all his strength into reaching the shaft as quickly as possible. He could see that unless the miner got dry soon, he would lose consciousness. For a man afraid of water, Marquez was game. He'd take a deep breath from the regulator and dutifully pass it back to Pitt without missing a beat.

When they came to the ladder, Pitt helped push Marquez up the first few rungs until he was completely out of the cold water. "Do you think you can make it up to the next tunnel on your own?"

"I'll have to," Marquez stammered, fighting the cold that had seeped into his veins. "I'm not about to give up now."

Pitt left him and returned for Ambrose, who was beginning to look cadaverous from the effects of the icy water. Hypothermia from the cold water had lowered his body temperature to ninety-two degrees. Another two-degree drop and he would be unconscious. Five more minutes and it would have been too late. The water was only inches away from the chamber's ceiling. Pitt didn't waste time in talk, but shoved the mouthpiece into the anthropologist's mouth and pulled him down into the cleft and out into the tunnel.

Fifteen minutes later, they were all grouped around a fire that Pat had managed to ignite from scraps of wood she'd found in a nearby crosscut passage. Scrounging about, Pitt soon discovered several old, fallen timbers that had remained dry over the years the mine had been abandoned. It wasn't long before the tunnel was turned into a blazing furnace and the survivors from the inundated chamber began to thaw out. Marquez began to look human again. Pat rebounded and was her old happy self as she vigorously massaged Ambrose's frozen feet.

While they treasured the warmth of the fire, Pitt busied himself with the computer, planning a circuitous route through the mine to the ground above. The Telluride valley was a virtual honeycomb of old mines. The shafts, crosscuts, drifts, and tunnels totaled more than 360 miles. Pitt marveled that the valley hadn't collapsed like a wet sponge. He allowed everyone to rest and dry out for close to an hour before he reminded them that they weren't out of the woods yet.

"If we want to see blue skies again, we'll have to follow an escape plan."

"What's the urgency?" shrugged Marquez. "All we have to do is follow this tunnel to the entrance shaft and then sit it out until rescuers dig through the avalanche."

"I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings," Pitt said, his voice grim, "but not only were rescuers finding it impossible to get their heavy equipment through twenty feet of snow up to the mine on a narrow road, they were pulled from the search because of rising air temperatures that were increasing the chances of another avalanche. There is no telling how many days or weeks it will take for them to clear a path to the mine entrance."

Marquez stared into the fire, picturing the conditions topside in his mind. "Everything is going against us," he said quietly.

"We have heat and drinking water, however silty," said Pat. "Surely, we can exist without food for as long as it takes."

Ambrose smiled faintly. "Sixty to seventy days is what it generally takes to starve to death."

"Or we could hike out while we're still healthy," offered Pitt.

Marquez shook his head. "You know better than anyone, the only tunnel that leads from the Buccaneer Mine to the Pandora is flooded. We can't get through the way you came."

"Certainly not without proper diving gear," added Ambrose.

"True," Pitt admitted. "But relying on my computerized road map, I estimate there are at least two dozen other dry tunnels and shafts on upper levels that we can use to reach the ground surface."

"That makes sense," said Marquez. "Except that most of those tunnels have collapsed over the past ninety years."

"Still," said Ambrose, "it beats sitting around playing charades for the next month."

"I'm with you," Pat agreed. "I've had my fill of old mine shafts for one day."

Her words prompted Pitt to walk over to the edge of the shaft and peer down. The flickering flames from the fire reflected off the water that had risen to within three feet of the tunnel floor. "We don't have a choice. The water will spill out of the shaft in another twenty minutes."

Marquez stepped beside him and stared at the turbid water. "It's crazy," he muttered. "After all these years, to see water flooding up to this level of the mine. It looks like my days of gemstone mining are over."

"One of the waterways that run under the mountain must have broken through into the mine during the earthquake."

"That was no earthquake," said Marquez angrily. "That was a dynamite charge."

"You're saying explosives caused the flooding and cave-in?" asked Pitt.

"I'm sure of it." He peered at Pitt, eyes suddenly narrowed. "I'd bet my claim that somebody else was in the mine."

Pitt stared at the menacing water. "If that's the case," he said pensively, "that somebody wants all three of you very dead."

5

"You lead off," PITT ordered Marquez. "We'll walk behind the beam of your miner's lamp until its batteries give out. Then we go the rest of the way on my dive light."

"Climbing to the upper levels through shafts will be the tough part," said the miner. "So far we've been lucky. Very few shafts had a ladder. Most of them used hoists to transport the miners and ore."

"We'll tackle that problem when we face it," said Pitt.

It was five o'clock in the afternoon when they set out through the tunnel, heading west as indicated on Pitt's dive compass. He looked odd, hiking through the tunnel in his dry suit, gloves, and Servus dive boots with steel toes. He carried only the computer, compass, underwater dive light, and the knife strapped to his right leg. He left the rest of his gear beside the dying embers of the fire.

The tunnel was clear of debris and the first hundred yards were fairly easy. Marquez led the way, followed by Pat and Ambrose, with Pitt bringing up the rear. There was enough walking room between the ore car tracks and the tunnel wall, making it unnecessary to step and stumble over the rail ties. They passed one shaft, then two, that were empty and lacking any means of climbing to the next level. They came to a small open gallery with three tunnels leading off into the darkness.

"If I remember the mine's layout correctly," said Marquez, "we take the tunnel that angles to the left."

Pitt consulted his trusty computer. "Right on the money."

Another fifty yards and they came to a rockfall. The amount of loose rock was not massive, and the men set to work digging a crawl space. An hour of effort and a quart of sweat later, they had gouged an opening big enough for all to snake through. The tunnel led to another chamber, this one with a shaft leading to an old hoist that was still in place. Pitt shined his light into the vertical passage. It was like looking into a bottomless pit upside down. The top lay far out of the range of the beam. But this shaft looked promising. A maintenance ladder was gripping one wall, and the cables that once lowered and raised the lift cages were still hanging in place.

"This is as good as it gets," said Pitt.

"I hope the ladder is sound," said Ambrose, grabbing the vertical sides and giving it a shake. It trembled like a bow from the base up until it vanished in the darkness. "My days of climbing hand over hand up old slimy cables are long gone."

"I'll go first," Pitt said, sliding a thong on the dive light's handle around his wrist.

"Mind the first step," Pat said, with a faint smile.

Pitt looked into her eyes and saw genuine concern. "The last step is the one that worries me most."

He gripped the ladder, climbed several rungs, and hesitated, not happy about the wobble. He pressed on, keeping an eye on the hoist cables hanging only an arm's length away. If the ladder gave way, he could at least reach out and stop his fall with one of the cables. He ascended slowly, one rung at a time, testing each one before giving it his full weight. He could have moved much faster, but he had to be sure the others could safely follow him.

Fifty feet above the people watching him in rapt suspense, he stopped and beamed his light up the shaft. The ladder abruptly ended only six feet ahead of him, but twelve feet below the floor of the tunnel above. Climbing two more rungs, Pitt extended an arm and grasped one of the cables. The woven strands were five-eighths of an inch thick, ideal for a good grip. He released his hold on the ladder and hauled himself hand over hand up the cable until he was four feet above the level of the tunnel floor. Then he swayed back and forth in an arc, gaining a couple of feet with each sweep before finally jumping onto solid rock.

"How is it?" shouted Marquez.

"The ladder is broken off just below the tunnel, but I can pull you the rest of the way. Send up Dr. O'Connell."

As Pat climbed toward Pitt's light, propped with its beam pointing down the shaft, she could hear him pounding something with a rock. By the time she reached the last rung, he had chiseled a pair of handgrips into some old timber and lowered it over the edge.

"Grab hold of the center board with both hands and hold on."

She did as she was ordered without protest and was quickly dragged onto firm ground. Minutes later, Marquez and Ambrose were standing in the tunnel beside her. Pitt aimed his light up the tunnel as far as the beam could penetrate and saw that it was clear of rockfalls. Then he switched it off to conserve the batteries.

"After you, Marquez."

"I probed this tunnel three years ago. If I remember correctly, it leads straight to the Paradise entrance shaft."

"Can't get out that way because of the avalanche," said Ambrose.

"We can bypass it," Pitt said, studying the monitor of the computer. "If we take the next crosscut and go a hundred and fifty yards, it meets a tunnel from a mine called the North Star."

"What exactly is a crosscut?" asked Pat.

"Access through perpendicular veins driven at right angles to a working tunnel. They're used for ventilation and communication between digging operations," answered Marquez. He looked at Pitt doubtfully. "I've never seen such a passage, which doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but it's probably filled in."

"Then keep a sharp eye along the tunnel wall on your left," advised Pitt.

Marquez nodded silently and set off into the darkness, his miner's lamp lighting the way. The tunnel stretched on and seemed endless. At one point, Marquez stopped and asked Pitt to shine his stronger beam at a rock fill between the timbers.

"This looks like what we're looking for," he said, pointing to a hard granite arch above the loose rock.

The men immediately went to work clearing the debris. After several minutes, they had dug through. Pitt leaned in and aimed his beam into a passage barely large enough to walk through. Then he checked his compass. "It heads in the right direction. Let's clear a crawl space and keep going."

This tunnel was narrower than the others, and they were forced to step over the ties supporting the ore cart tracks, making the going slow and torturous. An hour of endless walking over the tracks in the gloom, with only the miner's lamp for illumination, sapped what little stamina they had left. Everyone caught their feet on the uneven ties and stumbled one step for every five that were unimpeded.

Another cave-in that could not be penetrated caused a seemingly endless detour that cost almost two hours. Finally, they were able to bypass through a shaft that sloped up three more levels before ending at a large gallery that contained the corroded remains of a steam hoist. They struggled up to the top and trudged past the great steam cylinders and reels still holding a mile of cable.

The strain of the past few hours was beginning to show on Marquez. He was in good shape for his age, but he was not conditioned for the exertion and emotional stress he had endured the last several hours. Ambrose, though, looked as though he were on a walk in a park. He appeared remarkably calm and unruffled for a classroom professor. The only amusement came from Pitt's mumbled curses. At his six feet three, the hard hat, loaned to him by Pat because she was several inches shorter, struck overhead timbers with frustrating regularity.

Trailing behind, Pitt could not see their faces in the dim and cavorting shadows, but he knew that each one of them possessed a stubbornness that would keep them going until they dropped, too proud to be the first to suggest a rest break. He noted that their breathing had become more labored. Though he still felt fresh, he began panting loudly so the others could hear his seemingly desperate plea.

"I'm done in. How about stopping to rest a minute?"

"Sounds good to me," said Marquez, relieved that someone else had suggested it.

Ambrose leaned against one wall. "I say we keep going until we get out of here."

"You won't get my vote," said Pat. "My legs are screaming with agony. We must have stepped over a thousand railroad ties."

It was only after they all sagged to the floor of the tunnel, while Pitt casually remained standing, that they knew they had been tricked. None of them complained, everyone happy to relax and massage sore ankles and knees.

"Any idea how much farther?" asked Pat.

Pitt consulted his computer for the hundredth time. "I can't be absolutely positive, but if we can climb two more levels and are not blocked by another cave-in, we should be out of here in another hour."

"Where do you reckon we'll come out?" asked Marquez.

"My guess is somewhere right under the main town of Telluride."

"That would be the old O'Reilly Claim. It was a shaft sunk not far from where the gondola runs up the mountain to the ski slopes at Mountain Village. You do have a problem, though."

"Another one?"

"The New Sheridan Hotel and its restaurant now sit directly on top of the old mine entrance."

Pitt grinned. "If you're right, dinner is on me."

They went silent for the next two minutes, lost in their thoughts. The only sounds came from their breathing and the steady drip of moisture from the roof of the tunnel. Despondency gave way to hope. Knowing the end was perhaps in sight, they felt symptoms of fatigue begin to wash away.

Pitt had always suspected that women had more acute hearing than men, from the times his various lady friends had visited his apartment and complained that the volume on his TV was too loud. His suspicions were confirmed when Pat said, "I think I hear a motorcycle."

"A Harley-Davidson or a Honda?" asked Marquez, laughing for the first time since leaving his house.

"No, I'm serious," Pat said firmly. "I swear it sounds like a motorcycle."

Then Pitt heard something, too. He turned and faced the tunnel from the direction they had come and cupped his hands to his ears. He made out the undeniable sound of exhaust from a high-performance off-road motorcycle. He stared soberly at Marquez. "Do the locals ride around old mine tunnels on motocross dirt bikes for a thrill?"

Marquez shook his head. "Never. They'd become lost in a maze of tunnels, if they didn't plunge down a thousand-foot shaft first. Then there's the danger of their exhaust noise causing rotted beams to collapse and a cave-in to crush them. No, sir, nobody I know is fool enough to joyride underground."

"Where did they come from?" Pat asked no one in particular.

"From another mine that's still accessible. Lord only knows how they happened to be in the same tunnel as we are."

"A peculiar coincidence," Pitt said, staring up the tunnel. He felt a sense of uneasiness. Why? He couldn't be sure. He stood without moving a muscle, listening to the rattling sound of the exhaust as it grew louder. It was a foreign sound in the old mine labyrinth. It did not belong. He stood still as the first flash of light showed far down the tunnel.

Pitt couldn't tell yet if it was one or more motorcycles coming through the tunnel. It seemed a reasonable assumption that he should treat the biker or bikers as a threat. Better safe than sorry. As ancient and hackneyed as the words sounded, they still had meaning, and his cautious nature had saved him on more than one occasion.

He turned and slowly walked past Ambrose and Marquez. Absorbed in the approach of the sound and lights, they took no notice as he slipped along one wall of the tunnel in the direction of the approaching bikers. Only Pat focused on Pitt as he unobtrusively stole into the darkness of a portal leading into a narrow bore between the timbers. One moment he was there, the next he had vanished like a wraith.

There were three bikers. The front of their machines were packed with an array of halogen lights that blinded the exhausted survivors, who shielded their eyes with their hands and turned away as the engines slowed and idled in neutral. Two of the intruders dismounted their bikes and walked closer, their bodies silhouetted by the bright lights behind them. They looked like space aliens in their black, sleek helmets and two-piece jerseys worn under chest protectors. Their boots came halfway to their knees and their hands were encased in black, ribbed gloves. The third biker remained on his machine as the other two approached and raised the shields on their helmets.

"You don't know how happy we are to see you," said Pat excitedly.

"We sure could have used your help earlier," said Ambrose wearily.

"My compliments on making it this far," said the figure on the right, in a voice deep and sinister. "We thought sure you'd drowned in the Amenes chamber."

"Amenes?" Pat repeated, puzzled.

"Where did you guys come from?" demanded Marquez.

"It doesn't matter," said the biker, as if he were brushing off a classroom student's irrational question.

"You knew we were trapped in the chamber by a rockfall and rising water?"

"Yes," the biker said coldly.

"And you did nothing?" Marquez said incredulously. "You didn't try to rescue us or go for help?"

"No."

A stimulating conversationalist, this guy, thought Pitt. If he'd been a tiny bit suspicious earlier, he was downright convinced now that these men were not local daredevils on a weekend adventure. These men were killers, and heavily armed. He didn't know why, but he knew they were not going to allow them to escape the mines alive. It was time to act, and surprise was his only advantage. He slipped his dive knife from its sheath and gripped the hilt. It was the only weapon he had, and it would have to do. He took several slow deep breaths and gave a final flex to his fingers. It was now or never.

"We came within minutes of drowning in the chamber," said Pat, wondering what Pitt was planning, if anything. She began to wonder if he was a coward and simply hiding from danger.

"We know. That was the plan."

"Plan? What plan?"

"You all were supposed to die," the biker said conversationally.

The words were greeted with a stunned, uncomprehending silence. "Unfortunately, your will to survive overcame the cave-in and the flooding," the biker continued. "We did not foresee your perseverance. But it is of no matter. You merely prolonged the inevitable."

"The dynamite blast," muttered Marquez in shock. "That was you?"

The answer was candid. "Yes, we set the charge."

Pat began to look like a deer staring into the headlights of an approaching truck. She knew that the bikers were not aware of Pitt's presence, so she acted as if he didn't exist. Marquez and Ambrose assumed he was simply standing behind them quietly, as stunned with shock as they were.

"Why would you want to kill us?" she asked, her voice shaking. "Why would total strangers want to murder us?"

"You saw the skull and you saw the inscriptions."

Marquez looked like a man torn between fear and anger. "So what?" he growled.

"Your discovery cannot be allowed to become known outside these mines."

"We've done nothing wrong," Ambrose said, strangely calm. "We're scientists studying historic phenomena. We're not talking treasure but ancient artifacts. It's insane to be killed because of it."

The biker shrugged. "It's unfortunate, but you became involved with matters far beyond your comprehension."

"How could you possibly know about our entry into the chamber?" asked Marquez.

"We were informed. That's all you need to know."

"By who? Not more than five people knew we were there."

"We're wasting time," grunted the second biker. "Let's finish our business and throw them down the nearest shaft."

"This is madness," muttered Ambrose, with little or no feeling in his voice.

Pitt silently moved from the bore, any sounds of his footsteps covered by the soft popping from the exhaust, and crept up behind the rider still sitting on his bike, who was distracted by the conversation. Pitt was no stranger to killing, but it wasn't in him to knife another man in the back, no matter how rotten the victim might be. In the same motion, he reversed the grip on the knife and plunged the blunt hilt with all his strength against the base of the biker's neck below the helmet. It bordered on a killing blow, but it was a pound short of fatal. The biker sagged in his seat and fell back against Pitt without making so much as a soft moan. Pitt crouched low and quickly threw his arms around the body, held it for a moment, then lowered it, together with the bike, quietly onto the ore cart track with the engine still idling in neutral.

Working swiftly, he pushed aside the biker's chest protector and uncased a Para-Ordnance 10+1 round,45-caliber automatic from a shoulder holster strapped under an armpit. He trained the sights on the back of the biker standing on his right and pulled back the hammer. He had never fired a P-10 before, but from the feel, he knew the magazine was full and that the gun possessed most of the same features as his trusty old Colt .45, which was locked inside the NUMA vehicle he'd driven to Colorado from Washington.

The headlights on the motorcycles brightly illuminated the two killers, who failed to detect the figure stealing up behind them, but as Pitt crept closer, he passed in front of the light from the third bike, which was lying on the track, and he became identifiable to Ambrose.

The anthropologist spied Pitt emerging from the bright light, pointed behind the bikers, and blurted, "How did you get back there?"

At the words, Pitt took careful aim and allowed his index finger to caress the trigger.

"Who are you talking to?" the first biker demanded.

"Little old me," Pitt said casually.

These men were top of the line in their profession. There was no hint of stunned surprise. No pointless discussion. No obvious questions. No hesitation or remote display of uncertainty. Their sixth sense worked as one. Their actions came with lightning speed. In a seemingly fused, well-practiced movement, they jerked the P-10 autos from their holsters and whirled around within a single second, the expressions on their faces frozen in cold implacability.

Pitt did not face the killers full-on, knees slightly bent, his gun gripped and extended in two hands directly in front of his nose, the way they taught in police academies or as seen in action movies. He preferred the classic stance, body turned sideways, eyes staring over one shoulder, gun stretched out in one hand. Not only did he present less of a target, but his aim was more precise. He knew that the gunslingers of the West who'd lived to a ripe old age had not necessarily been the fastest on the draw, but they were the straightest shooters, who'd taken their time to aim before pulling the trigger.

Pitt's first shot took the biker on the right in the nape of his neck. A slight, almost infinitesimal shift of the P-10 as he squeezed the trigger for the second time, and the biker on the left took a bullet in the chest at nearly the same instant his own gun was lining up on Pitt's silhouetted figure. Pitt could not believe that two men could react as one in the blink of an eye. Had they been given another two seconds to snap off a shot, it would have been Pitt whose body fell heavily across the granite floor of the mine tunnel.

The gunshots erupted like a deafening barrage of artillery fire, reverberating throughout the rock walls of the tunnel. For ten seconds, perhaps twenty- it seemed more like an hour- Pat, Ambrose, and Marquez stared unbelievingly at the dead bodies at their feet, eyes wide and glazed. Then the tentative beginnings of a dazed hope and the final realization that they were still alive broke the horror-numbed spell.

"What in God's name is going on?" Pat said, her voice low and vague. Then she looked up at Pitt. "You killed them?" It was more a statement than a question.

"Better them than you," Pitt said, putting his arm around her shoulders. "We've experienced a nasty nightmare, but it's almost over now."

Marquez stepped past the rails and leaned down over the dead killers. "Who are these people?"

"A mystery for law-enforcement authorities to solve," replied Ambrose. He thrust out a hand. "I'd like to shake your hand, Mr…" He paused and looked blank. "I don't even know the name of the man who saved my life."

"It's Dirk Pitt," said Pat.

"I'm deeply in your debt," said Ambrose. He seemed more agitated than relieved.

"As am I," added Marquez, slapping Pitt's back.

"What mine do you think they entered to get here?" Pitt asked Marquez.

The miner thought a moment. "Most likely the Paradise."

"That means they purposely trapped themselves when they blew the dynamite that caused the avalanche," said Ambrose.

Pitt shook his head. "Not purposely. They knew they could make their way back to the surface by another route. Their big mistake was in using too massive a charge. They hadn't planned on the earth tremors, the collapse of the tunnel, and the opening of the underground fissures that allowed the water to rise and flood the tunnel."

"It figures," agreed Marquez. "Since they were on the opposite side of the cave-in, they could have easily ridden their bikes up the sloping shaft ahead of the flooding to the entrance. Finding it blocked with snow, they began searching connecting tunnels for a way out-"

"And after riding lost through the mines for hours, eventually came upon us," finished Ambrose.

Pitt nodded. "By riding up the Paradise's entrance shaft to this level, they saved climbing the vertical shafts we were forced to struggle through."

"It's almost as if they were looking for us," Marquez murmured.

Pitt didn't voice his thoughts to the others, but he was certain that once the bikers had ridden to the upper levels to escape the flooding, they had then followed in the footsteps of the four of them.

"It's all so crazy," said Pat, staring dazedly at the dead bikers. "What did he mean, we were `involved with matters far beyond our comprehension'?"

Pitt shrugged. "That's for others to decide. The question in my mind is who sent them? Who do they represent? Beyond that, I'm only a marine engineer who is damp and cold and wants to find a thick Colorado prime rib medium rare and a glass of tequila."

"For a marine engineer," said Ambrose, grinning, "you're pretty handy with a gun."

"It doesn't take virtuosity to shoot a man from behind," Pitt came back cynically.

"What do we do with him?" inquired Marquez, pointing at the biker Pitt had clubbed senseless.

"We've no rope to tie him up, so we'll take his boots. He won't get far in bare feet through the mine tunnels."

"You want to leave him?"

"No sense in hauling an inert body around. Chances are, by the time we notify the sheriff and he sends his deputies down here, the killer will still be unconscious." Then Pitt paused and asked, "Have any of you ridden motorcycles?"

"I rode a Harley for ten years," answered Marquez.

"And I have an old Honda CBX Super Sport that belonged to my dad," Pat volunteered.

"Do you ride it?"

"Rode it all through college. I still hit the roads with it on weekends."

Pitt looked at Pat with newfound respect. "So you're an old leather-crotch, hard-in-the-saddle woman."

"You got it," she said proudly.

Then he turned to Ambrose. "And you, Doc?"

"Never sat on a motorcycle in my life. Why do you ask?"

"Because we've got what look like three perfectly good Suzuki RM125 supercross bikes, and I see no reason why we can't borrow them and ride out of the mine."

Marquez's teeth showed in a wide smile. "I'm with you."

"I'll wait here until the sheriff shows up," said Ambrose. "The rest of you get going. I don't want to spend any more time with a live killer and two dead men than I have to."

"I don't like leaving you here alone with this killer, Doc. I'd prefer that you ride behind me until we're out of here."

Ambrose was firm. "Those bikes don't look like they were meant to haul passengers. I'm damned if I'll ride on one. Besides, you'll be traveling over rail tracks, making it unstable as hell."

"Have it your way," said Pitt, giving in to the obstinate anthropologist.

Pitt crouched and removed the P-10 automatics from the bodies. He was anything but a born killer, but he showed little remorse. Only a minute earlier, these men had been intent on murdering three innocent people whom they had never met- an act he could never have allowed to happen under any circumstances.

He handed one of the guns to Ambrose. "Stay at least twenty feet away from our friend, and stay alert if he so much as blinks." Pitt also gave Ambrose his dive light. "The batteries should last until the sheriff comes."

"I doubt if I could bring myself to shoot another human," Ambrose protested, but his voice came with a cold edge.

"Don't look upon these guys as human. They're cold-blooded executioners who could slit a woman's throat and eat ice cream afterward. I warn you, Doc, if he looks cross-eyed at you, brain him with a rock."

The Suzukis were still idling in neutral, and it took them less than a minute to figure out the shift, brake, and throttle controls. With a farewell wave to Ambrose, Pitt roared off first. There was no room for the machines to move between the outer rails and the walls of the tunnel, not without scraping the handgrips on the rough granite. Pitt kept his wheels in the center of the rail tracks, closely followed by Pat and Marquez. Bouncing over the rail ties with rigid suspensions rattled their teeth and made for uncomfortable riding. Pat felt as if her insides were being shaken around by a laundromat dryer. Pitt found the trick was to find the proper speed that gave the least vibration. It worked out to twenty-five miles an hour, a speed that might have seemed slow and safe on a paved road but was quite dangerous inside a narrow mine tunnel.

The hard-rock acoustics made the exhaust blast echo in their ears. The beams from the headlights hopped up and down, striking the rails and overhead timbers like strobe lights. He narrowly missed an ore car that was sitting on the tracks and partially protruding from an intersecting tunnel. After riding up the gentle grade of a lift shaft, they reached the upper level to a mine that was labeled "The Citizen" on Pitt's directional computer. Pitt rolled to a stop where the tunnel met another at a fork and consulted the tiny monitor.

"Are we lost?" Pat queried above the rattle from the exhaust pipes.

"Another two hundred yards down the tunnel on the left and we should come to the end of the mine tunnel you said comes out under the New Sheridan Hotel."

"The entrance to the O'Reilly Claim was covered over a hundred years ago," said Marquez. "We'll never get out that way."

"Never hurts to look," said Pitt, shifting gears and easing the clutch on the Suzuki. He gave the bike a burst of speed and was forced to brake hard within two minutes, when he suddenly confronted a brick wall that solidly blocked the old mine entrance. He came to an abrupt stop, leaned the bike against a timber, and studied the bricks under the headlight.

"We'll have to find another way," said Marquez, as he pulled alongside, came to a stop, and set both feet on the ground to keep the bike upright. "We've come out at the basement foundation wall of the hotel."

Pitt appeared not to have heard him. As if his mind was a thousand miles away, he slowly reached out and ran his hand over the old kiln dried red bricks. He turned as Pat stopped her bike and turned off the ignition.

"Where do we go now?" she asked, her voice betraying near-total exhaustion.

Pitt spoke without turning. "There," he answered offhandedly, pointing in the general direction of the brick wall. "I suggest you both move your bikes to the side of the tunnel."

Pat and Marquez didn't get it. They still didn't get it after Pitt climbed on the Suzuki, revved up the engine, and spun gravel under the rear wheel as he rode back into the tunnel. After a short minute, he was heard accelerating down the tracks toward them, the Suzuki's headlight beam dancing madly off the timbers.

Marquez reckoned Pitt was doing nearly thirty miles an hour when he thrust out his legs and dug his heels onto the twin ore cart rails less than ten yards from the wall, released his grip on the hand controls, and stood up, allowing the Suzuki to speed on from under him. Slumped backward to compensate for his momentum, he actually remained upright for nearly twenty feet before his feet slipped off the rails and he folded into a ball before tumbling through the tunnel like a soccer ball.

The motorcycle stayed on its wheels, but was just starting to lie on its side when it crashed into the brick wall with a protesting screech of metal and a cloud of dust, before bursting through the old decaying bricks and vanishing into the void beyond.

Pat ran over to Pitt's body, which had skidded to a stop and was sprawled on the ground. She would have sworn he had killed himself, but he looked up at her, blood streaming from a gash on his chin, and grinned like a madman. "Let's see Evel Knievel try that one," he said.

Pat stared down at him in amazement. "I can't believe you didn't break every bone in your body."

"None broken," he muttered in pain, as he slowly rose to his feet. "But I think I bent a few."

"That was the craziest thing I ever saw," mumbled Marquez.

"Maybe, but it worked better than I expected." Pitt, clutching his right shoulder, nodded at the hole in the brick wall. He stood there, getting his breath and waiting for the pain from bruised ribs and a dislocated shoulder to ease, while Marquez began pulling away the bricks loosened by the bike's passage to enlarge the entry.

The miner peered around the fractured wall and aimed his miner's lamp inside. After a few seconds, he looked back and said, "I think we're in deep trouble."

"Why?" asked Pat. "Can't we get out that way?"

"We can get out," said Marquez, "but it's going to cost us big time."

"Cost?"

Pitt limped painfully to the opening and peered inside. "Oh, no," he groaned.

"What is it?" Pat demanded in exasperation.

"The motorcycle," said Pitt. "It crashed into the wine cellar of the hotel restaurant. There must be a hundred broken bottles of vintage wine flowing down a drain in the floor."

6

Sheriff James Eagan, J R., was directing the rescue operation at the Paradise Mine when he received the call from his dispatcher informing him that Luis Marquez was being held in custody by the Telluride town marshal's deputies at the New Sheridan Hotel for breaking and entering. Eagan was incredulous. How was this possible? Marquezs wife had been adamant in claiming her husband and two others were trapped inside the mine by the avalanche. Against his better judgment, Eagan turned over command of the rescue operation and drove down the mountain to the hotel.

The last thing he expected to find was a mangled motorcycle sitting amid several cases of smashed bottles of wine. His astonishment broadened when he stepped into the hotel's conference room to confront the confessed culprits and found three damp, dirty, and bedraggled people, two men and one woman, one of them wearing a torn and tattered diver's wet suit. All were in handcuffs and in the custody of two deputy marshals, who stood with solemn expressions on their faces. One of them nodded at Pitt.

"This one was carrying an arsenal."

"You have his weapons?" Eagan asked officially.

The deputy nodded and held up three Para-Ordnance .45-caliber automatics.

Satisfied, Eagan turned his attention to Luis Marquez. "How in hell did you get out of the mine and wind up here?" he demanded in complete bewilderment.

"It doesn't matter!" Marquez snapped back. "You and your deputies have got to go down the tunnel. You'll find two dead bodies and a college professor, Dr. Ambrose, who we left guarding a killer."

There was a genuine feeling of skepticism, almost total disbelief, in Sheriff Jim Eagan's mind as he sat down, tipped his chair back on two legs, and pulled a notebook from the breast pocket of his shirt. "Suppose you tell me just what is going on here."

Desperately, Marquez gave a brief account of the cave-in and flooding, Pitt's fortuitous appearance, their escape from the mysterious chamber, the encounter with the three murderers, and their forced entry into the wine cellar of the hotel.

At first the details came slowly, as Marquez fought off the effects of strain and exhaustion. Then his words flowed faster as he sensed Eagan's obvious doubt. Frustration swelled and was replaced by urgency, as Marquez pleaded with Eagan to rescue Tom Ambrose. "Dammit, Jim, stop being stubborn. Get off your butt and go see for yourself."

Eagan knew Marquez and respected him as a man of integrity, but his story was too far-fetched to buy without proof. "Black obsidian skulls, indecipherable writings in a chamber carved a thousand feet into the mountain, murderers roaming mine shafts on motorcycles. If what you tell me is true, it will be the three of you who will be under suspicion for murder."

"Mr. Marquez has told you the honest truth," said Pat slowly, speaking for the first time. "Why can't you believe him?"

"And you are?"

"Patricia O'Connell," she said wearily. "I'm with the University of Pennsylvania."

"And what is your reason for being in the mine?"

"My field is ancient languages. I was asked to come to Telluride and decipher the strange inscriptions Mr. Marquez found in his mine."

Eagan studied the woman for a moment. She might have been pretty when attractively dressed and made up. He did not find it easy to believe she was a Ph.D. in ancient languages. Sitting there with her wet, stringy hair and mud-smeared face, she looked like a homeless bag lady.

"All I know for sure," said Eagan slowly, "is that you people destroyed a motorcycle, which might be stolen, and vandalized the wine cellar of the hotel."

"Forget that," pleaded Marquez. "Rescue Dr. Ambrose."

"Only when I'm sure of the facts will I send my men into the mine."

Jim Eagan had been sheriff of San Miguel County for eight years and worked in harmony with the marshals who policed the town of Telluride. Homicides were far and few between in San Miguel County. Law-enforcement problems usually centered around auto accidents, petty theft, drunken fights, vandalism, and drug arrests, usually involving young transients who passed through Telluride during the summer season and attended various affairs such as the bluegrass and jazz festivals. Eagan was respected by the citizens of his small but beautifully scenic domain. He was a congenial man, serious in his work, but quick to laugh when having a beer at one of the local watering holes. Of medium height and weight, he often wore a facial expression that could berate and intimidate. One look was generally all it took to cower any suspect he had arrested.

"May I ask you a small favor?" said the bruised and fatigued man in the torn diver's wet suit, who looked as though he'd been dragged through the impellers of a water pump.

At first glance, he looked to Eagan to be forty-five, but he was probably a good five years younger than the tanned and craggy face suggested. The sheriff guessed him to be about six feet three inches, weight 185 pounds, give or take. His hair was black and wavy, with a few strands of gray at the temples. The eyebrows were dark and bushy and stretched over eyes that were a vivid green. A straight and narrow nose dropped toward firm lips, with the corners turned up in a slight grin. What bothered Eagan wasn't so much the man's indifferent attitude- he'd known many felons who displayed apathy- but his bemused kind of detached interest. It was obvious that the man across the table was not the least bit impressed with Eagan's dominating tactics.

"Depends," Eagan answered finally, his ballpoint pen poised above a page in the notebook. "Your name?"

"Dirk Pitt."

"And what is your involvement, Mr. Pitt?"

"I'm special projects director for the National Underwater and Marine Agency. I was just passing by and thought it might be fun to prospect for gold."

Inwardly, Eagan seethed at being at a disadvantage. " We can do without the humor, Mr. Pitt."

"If I give you a phone number, will you do me the courtesy of calling it?" Pitt's tone was polite, with no trace of hostility.

"You want to speak to an attorney?"

Pitt shook his head. "No, nothing like that. I thought a simple call to confirm my position and presence might be helpful."

Eagan thought a moment, then passed his pen and notebook across the table. "Okay, let's have the number."

Pitt wrote it in the sheriff's notebook and handed it back. "It's long distance. You can call collect if you wish."

"You can pay the hotel," Eagan said, with a tight smile.

"You'll be talking to Admiral James Sandecker," said Pitt. "The number is his private line. Give him my name and explain the situation."

Eagan moved to a phone on a nearby desk, asked for an outside line, and dialed the number. After a brief pause, Eagan said, "Admiral Sandecker, this is Sheriff Jim Eagan of San Miguel County, Colorado. I have a problem here concerning a man who claims to work for you. His name is Dirk Pitt." Then Eagan quickly outlined the situation, stating that Pitt would probably be placed under arrest and charged with second-degree criminal trespass, theft, and vandalism. From that point on, the conversation went downhill, as his face took on a dazed expression that lasted nearly ten minutes. As if talking to God, he repeated, "Yes, sir," several times. Finally, he hung up and stared at Pitt. "Your boss is a testy bastard."

Pitt laughed. "He strikes most people that way."

"You have a most impressive history."

"Did he offer to pay for damages?"

Eagan grinned. "He insisted it come out of your salary."

Curious, Pat asked, "What else did the admiral have to say?"

"He said, among other things," Eagan spoke slowly, "that if Mr. Pitt claimed the South won the Civil War, I was to believe him."

Pitt and Marquez, with Eagan and one of his deputies trailing behind, stepped through the shattered wall of the wine cellar and began jogging through the old mine tunnel. They soon passed the old stationary ore car and continued into the yawning tube.

There was no way for Pitt to judge distance in the darkened bore. His best guess was that he had left Ambrose and the captured assassin approximately three-quarters of a mile from the hotel. He held a flashlight borrowed from a deputy and switched it off every few hundred feet, peering into the darkness ahead for a sign from the dive light he'd left with Ambrose.

After covering what he believed was the correct distance, Pitt stopped and aimed the beam of the flashlight as far up the tunnel as it would penetrate. Then he flicked it off. Only pitch blackness stretched ahead.

"We're there," Pitt said to Marquez.

"That's impossible," said the miner. "Dr. Ambrose would have heard our voices echoing off the rock and seen our lights. He would have shouted or signaled us."

"Something isn't right." Pitt threw the flashlight's beam at an opening in one wall of the tunnel. "There's the portal to the bore I hid in when the bikers approached."

Eagan came up beside him. "Why are we stopping?"

"Crazy as it sounds," Pitt answered, "they've vanished."

The sheriff shone his light in Pitt's face, searching for something in his eyes. "You sure they weren't a figment of your imagination?"

"I swear to God!" Marquez muttered. "We left two dead bodies, an unconscious killer, and Dr. Ambrose with a gun to cover him."

Pitt ignored the sheriff and dropped to his knees. He swept his light around the tunnel very slowly in a 180-degree arc, his eyes examining every inch of the ground and the ore car tracks.

Marquez started to say, "What are you-?" but Pitt threw up one hand, motioning him to silence.

In Pitt's mind, if Ambrose and the killer were gone, they had to have left some tiny indication of their presence. His original intent had been to look for the shell casings ejected from the P-10 automatic he'd used to shoot the killers. But there was no hint of a gleam from the brass casings. The back of his neck began to tingle. This was the right spot, he was certain of it. Then he sensed rather than saw an almost infinitesimal strand of black wire no more than eighteen inches away, so thin it didn't cast a shadow under his light. He trailed the beam along the wire, over the rail tracks, and up the wall to a black canvas bundle attached to one of the overhead timbers.

"Tell me, Sheriff," Pitt said in a strangely quiet voice, "have you had bomb-disposal training?"

"I teach a course in it to law enforcement," Eagan replied, eyebrows raised. "I was a demolitions expert in the Army. Why ask?"

"I do believe we were set up to enter the next world in pieces." He pointed to the wire leading from the tracks and up the timber. "Unless I miss my guess, that's an explosive booby trap."

Eagan moved until his face was inches away from the black strand. He followed it up to the canvas bundle and studied the bundle carefully. Then he turned to Pitt with a new level of respect in his eyes. "I do believe you are right, Mr. Pitt. Somebody doesn't like you."

"Include yourself, Sheriff. They must have known you and your men would have accompanied us back to Dr. Ambrose."

"Where is the professor?" wondered Marquez aloud. "Where did he and the killer go?"

"There are two possibilities," said Pitt. "The first is that the killer regained consciousness, overpowered Doc Ambrose, killed him and dumped his body down the nearest mine shaft. Then he placed the charge and escaped through another tunnel leading to the outside."

"You should write fairy tales," said Eagan.

"Then explain the booby trap."

"How do I know you didn't set it?"

"I have no motive."

"Get off it, Jim," said Marquez. "Mr. Pitt hasn't been out of my sight for the past five hours. He just saved our lives. If the blast didn't get us, the cave-in would."

"We're not certain the bundle contains explosives," Eagan said stubbornly.

"Then trip the wire and see what happens." Pitt grinned. "I, for one, am not going to hang around and find out. I'm out of here." He rose to his feet and began strolling along the ore car tracks back to the hotel.

"One moment, Mr. Pitt. I'm not through with you."

Pitt paused and turned. "What are your intentions, Sheriff?"

"Check out the sack wired to the timber, and if it's an explosive device, disarm it."

Pitt took a few steps back, his face dead serious. "I wouldn't if I were you. That's not some bomb built in the backyard of a junior terrorist. I'll bet my next paycheck it was exactingly assembled by experts and will burst at the slightest touch."

Eagan looked at him. "If you have a better idea, I'd like to hear it."

"The ore car sitting a couple of hundred yards up the track," replied Pitt. "We give it a shove and let it roll through here and trip the wire and detonate the explosives."

"The roof of the tunnel will collapse," said Marquez, "blocking it forever."

Pitt shrugged. "It's not like we're destroying the tunnel to deny access to future generations. We're the first to have passed through this section of the mine since the nineteen-thirties."

"Makes sense," Eagan finally agreed. "We can't leave explosives laying about for the next underground explorers who walk through here."

Fifteen minutes later, Pitt, Eagan, Marquez, and the deputy had pushed the ore car to within fifty yards of the trip wire. The heavy iron wheels squeaked and protested for the first fifty feet, but soon loosened and began to roll smoothly over the rusty rails as the ancient grease on their axles lubricated the roller bearings. The four sweating men finally reached the crest of a slight slope that led downward.

"The end of the line," Pitt announced. "One good shove and she should roll for a mile."

"Or until she drops into the next shaft," said Marquez.

The men heaved in unison and ran with the car, propelling it until it picked up speed and began to outrace them. They staggered to a halt and caught their breath, allowing their pounding hearts to slow. Then they held their flashlights on the ore car as it charged over the rails and disappeared around a gradual curve of the tunnel.

Less than a minute later, a tremendous detonation tore through the tunnel. The shock wave nearly knocked them off their feet. Then came a cloud of dust that swirled around and past them, followed by the deep rumble of tons of rock falling from the roof of the tunnel.

The rumble was still ringing in their ears, the echoes reverberating in the old mine, when Marquez shouted to Eagan, "That should stifle any doubts."

"In your haste to prove your point, you overlooked something," Eagan said loudly, his tone dry and provocative.

Pitt looked at him. "Which is?"

"Dr. Ambrose. He could still be alive somewhere beyond the cave-in. And even if he's dead, there will be no way of retrieving his body."

"It'll be a wasted effort," Pitt said briefly.

"You only gave us one possibility," said Eagan. "Does this have something to do with the second?"

Pitt gave a slight nod. "Dr. Ambrose," he said patiently, "is not dead."

"Are you saying the third assassin didn't kill him?" asked Marquez.

"He'd hardly murder his own boss."

"Boss?"

Pitt smiled and said firmly, "Dr. Tom Ambrose was one of the killers."

7

"Forgive me for arriving late for dinner," said Pat as she stepped through the Marquezes' front door. "But I desperately needed a hot bath, and I fear I soaked too long."

Lisa Marquez hugged Pat joyously. "You don't know how happy I am to see you again." She stepped back, and her face lit up like an angelic cherub as she saw Pitt following Pat into the house. She kissed him on both cheeks. "How can I ever thank you for bringing my husband home alive and well?"

"I cheated," Pitt said, with his trademark grin. "To save Luis I had to save myself."

"You're just being modest."

Pat was surprised to see Pitt show a hint of genuine embarrassment as he stared down at the carpet. She added, "Your husband wasn't the only life Dirk saved."

"Luis has been very closemouthed about your ordeal. You must fill me in on the details over dinner." Lisa looked elegant in a designer slacks outfit. "Here, let me take your coats."

"Do I smell elk sizzling on the barbecue?" said Pitt, extricating himself from an awkward situation.

"Luis is in the garage playing with his smoker," said Lisa. "It's too cold to eat outside, so I've set the table inside our glass-enclosed solarium on the rear porch deck. Luis installed heaters, so it's cozy warm. Help yourself to a beer as you pass through the kitchen."

Pitt retrieved a bottle of Pacifico beer from the refrigerator and joined Marquez in the garage. Marquez was hunched over a fifty-gallon drum that he had converted into a smoker. "Smells good," said Pitt. "You're not using a charcoal grill?"

"You get far better flavor from meat, chicken, or fish from a smoker," said Luis. "I shot the elk last season. Had it butchered in Montrose and frozen. Wait till you taste it with Lisa's special Mornay sauce."

A short time later, they were all seated at a pine log table Marquez had built inside the glassed-in porch, enjoying the elk steaks coated with Lisa's delicious sauce. Creamed spinach, baked potatoes, and a big bowl of salad enhanced the elk. Marquez had asked Pat and Dirk not to say too much about their harrowing experience. He didn't want to upset his wife any more than he had to. She had suffered enough during her agonizing wait until the word had come that he had exited the mine and was safe and sound. They had treated the ordeal lightly, omitting any reference to the killers and telling her that Ambrose was meeting friends and couldn't make it for dinner.

Despite the fact that they acted as if they had returned from a walk in the park, Lisa knew better, but she said nothing. After dinner, Pat helped her clear the table and returned, while Lisa busily fed her young daughters and made coffee before bringing out a carrot cake.

"Excuse me for a moment," said Pitt. He walked into the house and said a few words to Lisa before rejoining Pat and Marquez at the table.

Satisfied that his wife was out of earshot, Marquez stared directly at Pitt and said, "I can't accept your theory about Dr. Ambrose. I feel certain that he was murdered soon after we left him."

"I agree with Luis," said Pat. "To suggest that Tom was anything but a respected scientist is ridiculous."

"Had you ever met Ambrose before today?" asked Pitt.

She shook her head. "No, but I know him by reputation."

"But you've never seen him."

"No."

"Then how do you know whether the man we knew as Tom Ambrose wasn't an impostor?"

"All right," said Marquez. "Suppose he was a fake and working with those crazy bikers. How do you explain that fact that he would have surely drowned if you hadn't showed up?"

"That's right," Pat interjected quietly. "There's no way he'd be tied to a criminal conspiracy if the killers tried to murder him, too."

"His fellow assassins screwed up." There was a cold certainty in Pitt's voice. "They may have been demolitions experts, but not being professional hardrock miners like Luis, they set off an explosive charge too powerful for the job. Instead of merely causing a cave-in and blocking off the tunnel, they collapsed the rock holding back an underground river, diverting it into the lower levels of the mine. A miscalculation that fouled up their plans. The shaft and the chamber with the skull flooded before they could detour around the cave-in on their bikes to rescue their chief."

Marquez stared up at the mountain peaks surrounding Telluride that were outlined by the light of the evening stars. "Why cause the tunnel roof to collapse? What did they gain from that?"

"The perfect murder," answered Pitt. "They meant to kill the two of you by beating your brains in with rocks. Then they would have buried your bodies in the debris from the cave-in. When and if your remains were ever found, your deaths would be written off as a mining accident."

"Why kill us?" Pat asked incredulously. "For what purpose?"

"Because you posed a threat."

"Luis and I a threat?" She looked confused. "To whom?"

"To a well-financed, well-organized secret interest who didn't want the discovery of the chamber with the black skull to become public knowledge."

"Why would anyone want to cover up a major archaeological discovery?" said Pat, completely off balance.

Pitt turned up the Palms of his hands in a helpless gesture. "That's where conjecture stops. But I'm willing to bet the farm that this is not an isolated incident. That a trail of bodies leads to other fords of this magnitude."

"The only other archaeological project I can think of that is surrounded in this kind of mystery was an expedition led by Dr. Jeffrey Taffet from Arizona State University. He and several students died while exploring a cave on the northern slope of Mount Lascar in Chile."

"What was the cause of their deaths?" asked Marquez.

"They were found frozen to death," answered Pat. "Which was very peculiar, according to the rescue team who found the bodies. The weather had been perfect, without storms, and temperatures were barely below freezing. An investigation turned up no reason for Taffet and his students to have succumbed to hypothermia."

"What was of archaeological interest in the cave?" Pitt prompted.

"No one knows for sure. A pair of amateur mountain climbers from New York, both successful tax attorneys, discovered and explored the cave while descending from the summit of the mountain. They described ancient artifacts neatly placed about inside, shortly before they were killed."

Pitt stared at her. "They died, too?"

"Their private plane crashed on takeoff from the airport at Santiago for the flight home."

"The mystery deepens."

"Subsequent expeditions to the cave found nothing inside," Pat continued. "Either the attorneys exaggerated what they saw-"

"Or someone cleaned out the artifacts," Pitt finished.

"I wonder if the attorneys found a black skull," mused Marquez.

Pat shrugged. "No one will ever know."

"Did you manage to salvage your notes from the chamber?" Marquez asked Pat.

"The pages were soaked during our swim through the mine, but once I dried them with my hair dryer, they became quite readable. And if you have any questions about the meaning of the inscriptions, you can forget them. The symbols are from no known form of writing I've ever seen."

"I would think that written symbols cross over cultures, ancient and modern- that they would have similar markings," said Pitt thoughtfully.

"Not necessarily. There are many ancient inscriptions that stand alone without parallel symbols. Believe me when I say the signs on the walls in the chamber of the black skull are unique."

"Any chance they might be a deception?"

"I won't know until I have a chance to study them in depth."

"Take it from me," Marquez stated emphatically, "no one had entered that chamber before me in a long time. The surrounding rock showed no signs of recent digging."

Pat brushed her long red hair from her eyes. "The puzzle is who built it and why."

"And when," Pitt threw in. "Somehow the chamber and the killers are tied together."

A sudden breeze whistled up the canyon, rattling the windows of the solarium. Pat shivered. "The evening is getting cool. I think I'll get my coat."

Marquez turned toward the kitchen. "I wonder where Lisa is with the coffee and cake-"

His voice broke off as Pitt suddenly leaped to his feet. In one convulsive movement, he shoved the miner under the log table, then seized Pat and threw her to the wooden floor, covering her body with his own. Some alien wisp of movement in the shadows beside the house had tweaked the acute sense of menace that had been honed in him over the years. In the next instant, two explosions of gunfire burst from the shadows outside, coming so close together, they sounded as one.

Pitt lay there on Pat, hearing her gasp for the breath he had knocked from her chest. He rolled off her and came to his feet as he heard a familiar voice shout from the evening shadows, a voice distinct with an assured confidence.

"Got him!"

Pitt slowly helped Pat to a chair and pulled Marquez to his feet. "Those were gunshots… that voice?" murmured a dazed Marquez.

"Not to worry," Pitt said reassuringly. "The posse is on our side."

"Lisa, my kids," Marquez blurted, turning and starting to run into the house.

"Safe in the bathtub," said Pitt, grabbing an arm.

"How-?"

"Because that's where I told them to hide."

A stocky bull of a man materialized from the mountain undergrowth surrounding the house, wearing an Arctic white jumpsuit with a hood. He was dragging a body through the snow, dressed in a black ninja suit, its face covered by a ski mask. There was still enough light left in the sky to see the white-clad man's shag of black curly hair, dark Etruscan eyes, and lips spread in a white-toothed grin. He pulled the body along by one foot as effortlessly as if he were hauling a ten-pound bag of potatoes.

"Any problems?" asked Pitt quietly, stepping outside into the snow-covered yard.

"None," answered the stranger. "Like mugging a blind man. Despite a masterful attempt at a sneaky intrusion, the last thing he expected was an ambush."

"Underrating his intended prey is the worst miscalculation a professional killer can make."

Pat gazed at Pitt, ashen-faced. "You planned this?" she uttered mechanically.

"Of course," Pitt admitted, almost fiendishly. "The killers are…" He paused to look down at the man lying at his feet. "Or, rather, were fanatics. I can't begin to guess what lies behind their motive to kill anyone who entered that mysterious chamber. In my case, I moved to the head of their kill list when I showed up out of the blue and put a wrench in their well-oiled plan. They were also afraid I might return to the chamber and retrieve the black skull. Their fear of Pat was that she might decipher the inscriptions.

"After we escaped the tunnel and were released by Sheriff Eagan, this one stood back and watched us, waiting for the right opportunity. Because they had already made such a prolonged effort to hide the chamber discovery by eliminating all witnesses, it didn't take a class in village idiocy to figure they were not about to leave the job undone and allow any of us to leave Telluride alive. So I threw out the bait and reeled them in."

"You set us up as decoys," muttered Marquez. "We might have been killed."

"Better to take that risk now while the cards are on our side of the table than to wait until we're vulnerable."

"Shouldn't Sheriff Eagan be in on this?"

"As we speak, he should be apprehending the other killer at Pat's bed-and-breakfast."

"A gunman in my room?" Pat uttered in a shocked whisper. "While I was taking a bath?"

"No," Pitt said patiently. "He entered only after you left for the Marquez house with me."

"But he could have walked right in and murdered me."

"Not hardly" Pitt squeezed her hand. "Trust me when I say there was little danger. Didn't you notice the place was a little crowded? The sheriff arranged for a small throng of locals to roam the halls and dining rooms of the bed-and-breakfast, acting like conventioneers. It would have been awkward for a stalking killer to take his victim in a crowd. When it was advertised that you and I both were coming to the Marquezes' for dinner, the killers split the operation. One volunteered to send us all to the cemetery during dinner, while the other tossed your room for your notebook and camera."

"He doesn't look like anyone I know with the sheriff's department," said Marquez, pointing to the muscular intruder.

Pitt turned and placed his arm around the shoulders of the stranger who had just subdued the assassin. "May I present my oldest and dearest friend, Albert Giordino. Al is my assistant projects director with NUMA."

Marquez and Pat stood silently, uncertain of how to act. They studied Al with the intent of a bacterial researcher peering through a microscope at a specimen. Giordino simply released his grip on the intruder's foot, stepped forward, and shook their hands. "A pleasure to meet you both. I'm happy to have been of service."

"Who got shot?" Pitt queried.

"This guy had reactions you can't believe," said Giordino.

"Oh, yes, I can."

"He must have been psychic. He snapped off a shot in my direction the same instant I squeezed my own trigger." Giordino pointed to a slight tear along the hip of his jumpsuit. "His bullet barely bruised my skin. Mine took him in the right lung."

"You were lucky."

"Oh, I don't know," Giordino said loftily. "I aimed, he didn't."

"Is he still alive?"

"I should think so. But he won't be entering a marathon anytime soon."

Pitt leaned down and pulled the ski mask from the killer's head.

Pat gasped in horror- understandable, considering the circumstance, Pitt thought wryly. She still found it impossible to accept everything that had happened to her since stepping off the plane at the Telluride airport.

"Oh, dear God!" Her voice held a mixture of shock and distress. "It's Dr. Ambrose!"

"No, dear lady" Pitt said softly. "That is not Dr. Thomas Ambrose. As I told you before, the real Ambrose is probably dead. This lowlife probably took on the job of murdering you and me and Luis because only he could identify us with any certainty."

The truth of Pitt's words struck her with numbing cruelty. She knelt down and looked into the open eyes of the killer and demanded, "Why did you have to murder Dr. Ambrose?"

There was no flicker of emotion in the killer's eyes. The only indication of injury was the blood trickling from his mouth, a sure sign of a lung wound. "Not murdered, executed," he whispered. "He was a threat and had to die, just as you must all die."

"You have the guts to justify your actions," Pitt said, with an icy edge to his voice.

"I justify nothing. Duty to the New Destiny demands no justification."

"Who and what is the New Destiny?"

"The Fourth Empire, but you'll be dead before you see it" There was no hate, no arrogance in the killer's tone, just a simple statement of supposed fact. The killer spoke with a trace of a European accent.

"The chamber, the black skull, what is their significance?"

"A message from the past." For the first time, there was a hint of a smile. "The world's greatest secret. Which is all you'll ever know."

"You may become more cooperative after you've spent hard time in prison for murder."

There was a slight shake of the head. "I'll never stand trial."

"You'll recover."

"No, you're mistaken. There will be no opportunity to question me further. I die having the satisfaction of knowing you will soon follow, Mr. Pitt."

Before Pitt could stop him, the killer raised one hand to his mouth and inserted a capsule between his teeth. "Cyanide, Mr. Pitt. As functional and effective as it was when Hermann Goring took it sixty years ago." Then he bit down on the capsule.

Pitt quickly put his mouth to the killer's ear. He had to get in the last word before Tom Ambrose's slayer drifted into the great beyond. "I pity you, you pathetic slime. We already know about your moronic Fourth Empire." It was a nasty lie, but it gave Pitt wicked satisfaction.

The dark eyes widened, then slowly glazed and stared sightlessly as the killer died.

"Is he dead?" Pat whispered.

"As an Egyptian mummy," Pitt said coldly.

"Good riddance." Giordino shrugged indifferently. "A shame we can't donate his organs to the vultures."

Pat stared at Pitt. "You knew," she said quietly. "No one else noticed, but I saw you remove the ammo from his gun."

"He would have killed all three of us," Marquez muttered. "What put you onto him?"

"An educated guess," answered Pitt. "Nothing more. He struck me as too calculating, too cold. The bogus Dr. Ambrose didn't act like a man whose life was at risk."

The phone in the kitchen rang, and Marquez answered it, listened for a minute, spoke a few words, and hung up. "Sheriff Eagan," he reported. "Two of his deputies were seriously wounded in a gun battle at Pat's bed-and-breakfast. The unidentified armed suspect was mortally wounded and died before he could talk."

Pitt stared pensively at the body of the bogus Dr. Ambrose. "Who said dead men tell no tales?"

"Is it safe to come out?" asked Lisa Marquez in a tone slightly above a whisper, peering fearfully around the kitchen doorway and seeing the body lying on her floor.

Pitt walked over and took her by the hand. "Perfectly safe."

Marquez put a solicitous arm around her. "How are the girls?"

"They slept through most of it."

"The cave-in sealed off the tunnel for good," he said to Lisa slowly. "It looks as if our mining days are over."

"I won't lose any sleep over it," Lisa said, with a growing smile. "You're a wealthy man, Luis Marquez. It's time we embraced another lifestyle."

"It is also imperative," advised Pitt, as the shriek of the sirens on the sheriff's car and the ambulance could be heard approaching down the road. "Until we know who these people are and what their objective is," he paused to stare angrily down at the killer's body, "you and your family will have to leave Telluride and disappear."

Lisa stared at her husband with a faraway look in her eyes. "That small hotel surrounded by palm trees on the beach at Cabo San Lucas we always wanted to buy…"

He nodded. "I guess now is the time."

Pat touched Pitt's arm, and he turned and smiled down at her. "Where am I supposed to hide?" she asked softly. "I can't simply drop my academic career. I've worked too hard to get where I am with the university."

"You life isn't worth two cents if you return to the classroom and your research studies," said Pitt. "Not until we know what we're facing."

"But I'm an ancient language specialist, you're an underwater engineer. Hunting down murderers isn't our job."

"You're right," he agreed. "Government investigative agencies will take over from here. But your expertise will be invaluable in solving the puzzle."

"You don't think this is the end of it?"

He slowly shook his head. "Call it a complicated conspiracy or a Machiavellian plot- something is going down that goes far beyond mere murder. I don't have to possess psychic gifts to know the inscriptions and the black skull inside the chamber have far deeper consequences than we can possibly imagine."

When Sheriff Eagan arrived and began questioning Giordino, Pitt walked outside into the cold night and looked up at the great carpet in the black sky that was the Milky Way. The Marquez house was at nearly ten thousand feet of altitude, and here the stars were magnified into a sparkling sea of crystal.

He looked beyond the skies and cursed the night, cursed his helplessness, cursed the unknown murderers, cursed himself for being lost in a maelstrom of bewilderment. Who were the madmen and their crazy New Destiny? Answers were lost in the night. He couldn't see the obvious, and the inevitable became remote and distant.

He knew for certain that someone was going to pay, and pay big time.

He began to feel better. Beyond his anger lay an icy confidence, and beyond that a heightened lucidity. A thought was already forming in his mind, racing and developing until he saw clearly what he must do.

First thing in the morning, he was going back into the mines and bring out the black obsidian skull.

8

Unable to use their original escape route because of the booby trap explosive that had collapsed the roof of the tunnel, a team consisting of Pitt, Giordino, Eagan, Marquez, and two deputies traveled the course Pitt had taken from the Buccaneer Mine twenty-four hours earlier. Relying on Pitt's directional computer for guidance, the men quickly reached a flooded shaft that dropped to the tunnels below and led into the Paradise Mine.

Pitt stood on the edge of the shaft and stared into the black, ominous water, wondering if this was such a good idea. The flooding had risen two mine levels higher than the day before. During the night the pressure from far below had slowly diminished, until the water finally found its level.

Sheriff Eagan thought he was crazy. Pat O'Connell thought he was crazy, as did Luis and Lisa Marquez. Only Giordino refrained from calling Pitt crazy, and that was because he insisted on going along as backup in case Pitt ran into trouble.

The dive equipment was basically the same as that Pitt used before, except that now he intended to wear a dry suit. The wet suit had proven practical for movement out of water and protected him from cold during the hike through the mines, but the dry suit was more efficient in insulating the body against the frigid thermal temperatures of the underground water. For the hike back to the shaft, however, he wore warm, comfortable clothing, planning to change into the dry suit only when it came time to go under.

Luis Marquez had accompanied the expedition after recruiting three of his neighboring miner friends to help carry the dive equipment, which included rope ladders to ease the trip through vertical shafts. Sheriff Eagan firmly believed his services would be required to direct a rescue operation that he saw as inevitable.

Pitt and Giordino slipped out of their street clothes and, for added thermal protection, pulled on nylon-and-polyester inner suits that were shaped like long john underwear. Then they climbed into Viking vulcanized-rubber dry suits with attached hood, gloves, and traction-soled boots. Once they were suited up, their equipment and gauges checked, Pitt glanced into Giordino's face. The little Italian looked as unruffled and tranquil as if he were about to dive into an eight-foot-deep swimming pool. "I'll guide us with the directional computer and leave it to you to focus on the decompression tables."

Giordino held up a decompression computer strapped to his left arm. "Figuring an approximate dive time of thirty minutes in water one hundred and ten feet deep, at an altitude of ten thousand feet above sea level, took a bit of prodigious calculation for our decompression stops. But I think I can get you back to this rock garden without narcosis, an embolism, or the bends."

"I'll be eternally grateful."

Pitt pulled on a Mark II full face mask with a built-in underwater communications system. "Do you read me?" he asked Giordino.

"Like you were inside my head."

They had hauled ten air tanks into the mine. For the dive, they each carried twin tanks strapped to their backpacks, with a reserve tank clamped in between for a total of six. The remaining four were to be lowered by Marquez and his friends at predetermined depths as reckoned by Giordino's computer for the decompression stops. They carried no weapons except their dive knives.

"I guess we might as well go," said Pitt.

"After you," Giordino replied.

Pitt switched on his dive light and beamed it onto the smooth surface of the water. He kicked off from the edge and dropped five feet through the air, crashing through the liquid void in an explosion of bubbles. A second explosion quickly followed, as Giordino emerged out of the gloom beside him. He made a motion with his hand downward, doubled over, and kicked his fins, heading into the depths of the mine.

They swam down, down, their dive lights cutting the black water, revealing nothing but cold, hard rock walls. They went slowly, equalizing the increasing water pressure in their ears the deeper they dove. If they hadn't known they were diving down a vertical shaft, they'd have sworn they were swimming inside a horizontal drainpipe.

At last, the floor of the gallery at the bottom of the shaft appeared, the ore cart track rising to meet them, rails mute and cold under their thick film of rust. The turbidity created by the rushing surge after the explosion the day before had dissipated and the water was calm and clear, visibility reaching at least fifty feet. Pitt checked his depth gauge- the needle stood at 186 feet- and he waited until Giordino leveled out slightly ahead of him.

"How far from here?" asked Giordino.

"Ninety to a hundred yards," Pitt answered, pointing. "Just around that bend in the tunnel."

He pumped his fins and darted into the tunnel, his light sweeping back and forth through the timbers. They rounded the bend, moving above the curve of the ore cart tracks. Suddenly, Pitt thrust out his arm and abruptly stopped.

"Switch off your light!" he ordered Giordino.

His friend complied, casting the tunnel into smothering blackness, but not totally. A dim glow filtered through the water in front of them. "I think we have poachers," said Giordino.

"Why is it these characters materialize every time I blow my nose?" Pitt groaned.

There were two divers inside the chamber, both working with intent and purpose, photographing the inscriptions on the walls. A pair of underwater floodlights stood on stands, illuminating the drowned chamber as dazzlingly as a Hollywood studio stage. Pitt gazed upward through the hole on the floor of the chamber, staying in the shadows so the divers inside wouldn't spot a reflection from the glass plate in his full face mask.

He marveled at their efficiency. They were using self-contained breathing units that absorbed and eliminated the bubbles exhaled through their air regulators in order to prevent water disturbance in front of their camera lenses. He was especially careful not to allow his own exhaust bubbles to float through the opening in the chamber floor.

"They're tenacious, I'll give them that," Pitt muttered. "Whatever is in the inscriptions, they want it badly enough to kill and die for it."

"Good thing their communications system is on a different frequency, or they'd have eavesdropped on our conversations."

"Could be they've tuned in and plan on suckering us inside."

Giordino's lips curled into a tight grin behind the mask. "So do we disappoint them and cut and run?"

"Since when were we ever smart enough to take the easy way out?"

"Never, that I recall."

Giordino's bond with Pitt had never weakened in all their years of friendship- a friendship that went all the way back to the first grade. Whatever scheme Pitt devised, no matter how insane or ridiculous, Giordino was in for a penny, in for a pound, without the slightest protest. They had saved each other's life on more than one occasion, and when needed could get inside the other's head. That they worked as a close-knit team went without saying. Their adventures were legendary within NUMA.

"It'd be next to impossible for both of us to rush inside the chamber in unison before they react," said Pitt, eyeing the narrow diameter of the opening.

"We could swim inside and knife them in their respective guts," said Giordino quietly.

"If our positions were reversed," murmured Pitt, so softly that Giordino could barely hear him, "that's what they would do to us. But the practical side of me says take them alive."

"Easier said than done."

Pitt moved as close as he dared to the opening and peered at the two divers, who were absorbed in their work. "I think I see an opportunity."

"Don't leave me in suspense," said Giordino, removing his gloves so his hands had freedom of movement.

"They're wearing their dive knives strapped to their lower legs."

Giordino's eyebrows rose questioningly under the mask. "So are we.

"Yes, but we're not about to be attacked from behind by a pair of genial and dashing rogues."

The divers inside finished photographing the inscriptions and star symbols. While one loaded their camera equipment in a large duffel bag, the other began placing a charge of explosives in one corner of the chamber. The procedure played into Pitt and Giordino's hands. As soon as the diver with the camera gear had worked his way through the hole into the cavity below, Giordino snatched the mouthpiece of the breathing regulator from between the man's lips and cut off his air supply. In the same instant, he circled a massive arm around the man's exposed neck, choking him until he went limp from unconsciousness.

"I've got mine," Giordino muttered heavily.

Pitt didn't bother to reply. With a powerful kick of his fins, he shot into the chamber and toward the unsuspecting diver connecting a timer to the explosives. He came in from the side to avoid the air tanks on the diver's backpack. In a repeat of Giordino's performance, he tore away the mouthpiece and squeezed the diver's throat in a viselike grip. Pitt had not enjoyed the luxury of time, however, to see that he was tackling a man of giant size. It took all of two seconds for Pitt to realize he had bitten off more than he could chew. His opponent was built like a professional wrestler and had the muscles of one. He didn't react with helpless inertia, but thrashed around the narrow confines of the chamber like a crazy man in a violent fit. Pitt felt like a fox who had unwittingly leaped onto the back of a wounded bear and was holding on for dear life.

The sheer animal power as the man tried to reach over his shoulders and grasp Pitt's head was terrifying. Two huge hands managed to clutch Pitt around the head. For a few moments, Pitt thought his skull was beginning to crack in a hundred places. What saved him from having his brains turned into mush was a beefy wrist that moved beside his jaw. He spat out his mouthpiece, somehow managed to twist his head under the crushing grip, and bit the wrist as hard as his jaws could clamp. A cloud of blood billowed in the water. The hands around his head jerked free in chorus with a painful shout that came as a grotesque gurgle. Pitt held on and squeezed the great bull of a neck with every ounce of his fading strength. In desperation, he ripped the monster's face mask off.

The big man threw himself backward toward one wall in a convulsive jerk. Pitt's air tanks clanged against the rock and the breath was crushed out of him, but his choke hold did not loosen, even by a fraction. He gripped the wrist of the arm around the throat with his free hand and increased the pressure.

From behind and to the side, Pitt could not see the other man's face. Whipping his body from side to side like a dog shaking his coat wet with water, the giant tried desperately to find his air regulator and thrust it back in his mouth, but its hose was wrapped around Pitt's arm. Frantically, the man bent forward enough to grab his dive knife from the sheath strapped to his right calf. Pitt had expected the movement and was prepared for it. As the giant reached down, Pitt released the hand holding the arm around his throat, raised it, and jabbed a finger in an open eye.

The effect was what he expected, what he'd hoped. The gorilla of a man went stiff as a tree and clamped a hand to his eye. In the process, he blindly caught hold of Pitt's hand and slowly, relentlessly began to bend the index and middle fingers backward. The pain shot through Pitt like a shaft of lightning. The agony of having the bones of the fingers snapped is unlike any other. Excruciating doesn't do justice as a description. Pitt began to see fireworks behind his eyes. He was within a microsecond of releasing his stranglehold and clutching at the hand that was causing him so much torment, when he sensed an infinitesimal drop in pressure. The pain was still there, but lessening by tiny degrees.

Slowly, almost too slowly, the stabbing pain began to subside as the giant started sucking water in through his open mouth. His movements became uncoordinated and spasmodic. He entered the initial stages of blackout as he began to drown. His face suddenly contorted in fear and panic. Pitt waited several seconds after the big man went limp before he replaced the mouthpiece, forcing air down his victim's throat and lungs.

Giordino came halfway through the hole. "What took you so long?"

"The luck of the draw," Pitt gasped between breaths, his heart pounding like a piston inside a cylinder. "I always choose the wrong lane of traffic, the wrong line to stand in at the bank and the biggest guy in the world to pick a fight with. What about your man?"

"I wrapped him tighter than a silkworm with electrical cord I found on a string of overhead lights." Giordino looked down at the inert form on the floor of the chamber, and the eyes behind the dive mask widened. He stared at Pitt with growing respect. "Do the coaches of the National Football League know about this guy?"

"If they did, he'd be a number-one draft choice," Pitt said, as his heart began to slow and his breath came evenly. "Take their knives and any other weapons you can find. Then find some more electrical cable and let's bind him before he comes around and tears the mountain down. Leave their dive masks off so their vision is blurred."

Giordino hog-tied the giant diver with electrical cord and dropped him none too gently through the opening into the cleft below. He then removed one or two weights from the belts of both men, so their bodies were slightly buoyant, which made their mass easier to tow back through the tunnel. He also removed their dive knives. On the smaller man, he found a little gun that shot a shaft with a barb on one end. The shaft was propelled by compressed air from a tiny cylinder.

While Giordino was concentrating on their prisoners, Pitt removed a large nylon net bag from his weight belt and opened the metal clasp at the top. He stared at the sinister black skull that seemed to stare back through empty eye sockets. He could not help but wonder if a curse came with the skull. What cryptic secrets did it hold?

Pitt's idealistic nature was overpowered by his practical side. Though he was a daydreamer, he did not buy into myths and folktale. If an object or conception could not be seen, felt, or experienced, it did not exist for him. If he wasn't already a hundred and eighty feet under water, he would have spat in the eye of the obsidian skull. But because it was a link in a chain of enigmas, he was determined to place it in the hands of people who could properly study it.

"Sorry, my friend," he murmured so softly that Giordino didn't hear him, "but it's time you revealed yourself." He lifted the skull very carefully from its pedestal and slid it into the carry bag. At this depth he handled it easily, but once it carne out of the water, he guessed it would weigh a solid forty pounds. He took one final look at the chamber, the inscriptions on the walls, the still-burning floodlights lying on the floor where they had been hurled during the struggle. Then he dove headfirst through the hole in the rock, mindful not to knock the skull against the rock and shatter it. Giordino had already pulled the two divers into the tunnel. The giant of a man had regained consciousness and was struggling violently to break free of the electrical cord that bound his ankles and pinned his arms tightly against his immense body.

"Need a hand?" Pitt asked.

"You carry the skull and the bag with the cameras. I'll tote the refuse."

"Best if you go first and I follow. That way I can watch them every inch of the way in case Big Boy starts breaking loose."

Giordino handed him the little gun with the barb. "Shoot him in his Adam's apple if he so much as wiggles a finger."

"We'll have to be very careful in our decompression stops. We may not have enough air for the four of us."

Giordino made an indifferent motion with his hands. "Sorry, I'm not in a sacrificial mood."

The return went slowly. Giordino made better time dragging the two divers and their breathing gear by walking over the ore track ties than trying to swim his way back to the shaft. Precious air was lost during the prolonged passage. Pitt kept a close eye on his air gauge- he knew that his air was seriously depleted. The gauge read just three hundred pounds. He and Giordino had used twice the amount of air they had computed before the dive, not having counted on a fight with intruders.

He curled his body and kicked around to the side of the bound divers, checking their air gauges. Both men had nearly seven hundred pounds. They must have found a shorter route through the mine to the chamber, Pitt surmised. After what seemed a year and a day, they finally reached the vertical shaft and rose to the first decompression stop. Sheriff Eagan and Luis Marquez had lowered two spare tanks on nylon line to the precise depth Giordino had calculated earlier.

Keeping a tight eye on his decompression computer, Giordino listened as Pitt read off the air pressure remaining in each tank. Only when they went beyond the safety level did he unstrap and push them aside. The prisoners did not become belligerent. They'd come to realize that to resist was to die. But Pitt didn't let down his guard for a second. He knew well they were two ticking time bombs, waiting to explode at the first opportunity that presented itself for them to escape.

Time passed as if mired in glue. They used up the last of their air and went on the reserve tanks. When the prisoner's tanks were dry, Pitt and Giordino began to buddy-breathe with them, exchanging their mouthpieces between breaths. After the prescribed wait, they lazily swam up to the next decompression stop.

They were scraping the bottom of the reserve tanks when Giordino finally gave the "surface" sign and said, "The party's over. We can go home now."

Pitt climbed the rope ladder thrown into the shaft by Marquez. He reached the rim of the tunnel floor and handed Sheriff Eagan his air tanks. Then he passed up the skull and camera bag. Next, Eagan took Pitt's outstretched hand and helped him onto firm rock. Pitt rolled over on his back, removed his full face mask, and lay there for a minute, thankfully breathing in the cool damp air of the mine.

"Welcome home," said Eagan. "What took you so long? You were due back twenty minutes ago."

"We ran into two more candidates for your jail."

Giordino surfaced, climbed up, and then knelt on his hands and knees before hauling the smaller prisoner into the tunnel. "I'll need help with the other," he said, lifting his face mask. "He weighs two of me put together."

Three minutes later, Eagan was standing over the intruders, questioning them. But they glared menacingly at him and said nothing. Pitt dropped to his knees and removed the dive hood covering the smaller man's head and chin.

"Well, well, my friend the biker. How's your neck?"

The constrained killer lifted his head and spat at Pitt's face, narrowly missing. The teeth were bared like a rabid dog's. Eyes that had seen more than one death glared at Pitt.

"A testy little devil, aren't we?" said Pitt. "A zealot of the Fourth Empire. Is that it? You can dream about it while you rot in jail."

The sheriff reached down and gripped Pitt's shoulder. "I'll have to let them go free."

Pitt stared up, his green eyes suddenly blazing. "Like hell you will."

"I can't arrest them unless they've committed a crime," Eagan said helplessly.

"I'll press charges," Marquez cut in coldly.

"What charges?"

"Trespassing, claim-jumping, destroying private property, and you can throw in theft for good measure."

"What did they steal?" Eagan asked, puzzled.

"My overhead lighting system," Marquez replied indignantly, pointing down at the electrical cord binding the divers. "They've snatched it from my mine."

Pitt placed a hand on Eagan's shoulder. "Sheriff, we're also talking attempted murder here. I think it might be wise if you held them in custody for a few days, at least until a preliminary investigation can make an identification and perhaps uncover evidence of their intentions."

"Come on, Jim," said Marquez, "you can at least keep them under lock and key while you interrogate them."

"I doubt whether I'll get much out of this lot."

"I agree," said Giordino, running a small brush through his curly hair. "They don't look like happy campers."

"There's something going on here that goes far beyond San Miguel County." Pitt peeled off his dry suit and began dressing in his street clothing. "It won't hurt to cover your bases."

Eagan looked thoughtful. "All right, I'll send a report to the Colorado Investigation Agency-"

The sheriff broke off as every head turned and stared up the tunnel. A man was shouting and running toward them as if chased by demons. A few seconds later, they could see that it was one of Eagan's deputies. He staggered to a halt and leaned over until his head was even with his hips, panting for breath, exhausted after running from the hotel wine cellar.

"What is it, Charlie?" Eagan pressed. "Spit it out!"

"The bodies…" Charlie the deputy gasped. "The bodies in the morgue!"

Eagan took Charlie by the shoulders and gently raised him upright. "What about the bodies?"

"They're missing."

"What are you talking about?"

"The coroner says they've disappeared. Somebody snatched them from the morgue."

Pitt looked at Eagan for a long moment of silence, then said quietly, "If I were you, Sheriff, I'd send copies of your report to the FBI and the Justice Department. This thing goes far deeper than any of us imagined."