Inca Gold

Yuma gazed thoughtfully at his work-worn hands. "We too have a legendary demon of the underworld who keeps the dead from escaping and the living from entering. He also passes judgment on our dead, allowing the good to pass and devouring the bad."

"A Judgment Day demon," said Pitt.

Yuma nodded solemnly. "He lives on a mountain not far from here."

"Cerro el Capirote," Pitt said softly.

"How could a stranger know that?" Yuma asked, looking deeply into Pitt's green eyes.

"I've been to the peak. I have seen the winged jaguar with the serpent's head, and I guarantee you he wasn't put there to secure the underworld or judge the dead."

"You seem to know much about this land."

"No, actually very little. But I'd be most interested in hearing any other legends about the demon."

"There is one other," Yuma conceded. "Enrique Juarez, our oldest tribal elder, is one of the few remaining Montolos who remember the old stories and ancient ways. He tells of golden gods who came from the south on great birds with white wings that moved over the surface of the water. They rested on an island in the old sea for a long time. When the gods finally sailed away, they left behind the stone demon. A few of our brave and curious ancestors went across the water to the island and never returned. The old people were frightened and believed the mountain was sacred and all intruders would be devoured by the demon." Yuma paused and gazed into the desert. "The story has been told and retold from the days of my ancestors. Our younger children, who are schooled in modern ways, think of it simply as an old people's fairy tale."

"A fairy tale mixed with historical fact," Pitt assured Yuma. "Believe me when I tell you a vast hoard of gold lies inside Cerro el Capirote. Put there not by golden gods from the south, but Incas from Peru, who played on your ancestors' reverence of the supernatural by carving the stone monster to instill fear and keep them off the island. As added insurance, they left a few guards behind to kill the curious until the Spanish were driven from their homeland, and they could come back and reclaim the treasure for their new king. It goes without saying, history took a different turn. The Spaniards were there to stay and no one ever returned."

Billy Yuma was not a man given to extreme emotion. His wrinkled face remained fixed, only his dark eyes widened. "A great treasure lies under Cerro el Capirote?"

Pitt nodded. "Very soon men with evil intentions are coming to force their way inside the mountain to steal the Inca riches."

"They cannot do that," Yuma protested. "Cerro el Capirote is magic. It is on our land, Montolo land. The dead who did not pass judgment live outside its walls."

"That won't stop these men, believe me," said Pitt seriously.

My people will make a protest to our local police authorities."

"If the Zolars run true to form, they've already bribed your law enforcement officials."

"These evil men you speak of. They are the same ones who sold our sacred idols?"

"As I suggested, it's very possible."

Billy Yuma studied him for a moment. "Then we do not have to trouble ourselves with their trespass onto our sacred ground."

Pitt did not understand. "May I ask why?"

Reality slowly faded from Billy's face and he seemed to enter a dreamlike state. "Because those who have taken the idols of the sun, moon, earth, and water are cursed and will suffer a terrible death."

"You really believe that, don't you?"

"I do," Yuma answered somberly. "In my dreams I see the thieves drowning."

"Drowning?"

"Yes, in the water that will make the desert into the garden it was for my ancestors."

Pitt considered making a contrary reply. He was not one to deposit his money in the bank of dreams. He was a confirmed skeptic of the metaphysical. But the intractable gaze in Yuma's eyes, the case-hardened tone of his voice, moved something inside Pitt.

He began to feel glad that he wasn't related to the Zolars.

Amaru stepped down into the main sala of the hacienda. One wall of the great room was filled by a large stone fireplace removed from an old Jesuit mission. The high ceiling was decorated with intricate precast plaster panels. "Please excuse me for keeping you waiting, gentlemen."

"Quite all right," said Zolar. "Now that the fools from NUMA have led us directly to Huascar's gold, we made good use of your tardiness by discussing methods of bringing it to the surface."

Amaru nodded and looked around the room. There were four men there besides himself. Seated on sofas around the fireplace were Zolar, Oxley, Sarason, and Moore. Their faces were expressionless, but there was no concealing the feeling of triumph in the air.

"Any word of Dr. Kelsey, the photographer Rodgers, and Albert Giordino?" Sarason inquired.

"My contacts over the border believe Pitt told you the truth on the ferry when he said he dropped them off at the U.S. Customs compound in Calexico," answered Amaru.

"He must have smelled a trap," said Moore.

"That was obvious when he returned to the ferryboat alone," Samson said sharply to Amaru. "You had him in your hands and you let him escape."

"Not forgetting the crew," added Oxley.

"I promise you, Pitt did not escape. He was killed when my men and I threw concussion grenades into the water around him. As to the ferryboat's crew, the Mexican police officials you've paid to cooperate will ensure their silence for as long as necessary."

"Still not good," said Oxley. "With Pitt, Gunn, and Congresswoman Smith gone missing, every federal agent between San Diego and Denver will come nosing around."

Zolar shook his head. "They have no legal authority down here. And our friends in the local government would never permit their entry."

Samson looked angrily at Amaru. "You say Pitt's dead. Then where is the body?"

Amaru stared back nastily. "Pitt is feeding the fishes. Take my word for it."

"Forgive me if I'm not convinced."

"There is no way he could have survived the underwater detonations."

"The man has survived far worse." Sarason walked across the room to a bar and poured himself a drink. "I won't be satisfied until I see the remains."

"You also botched the scuttling of the ferryboat," Oxley said to Amaru. "You should have sailed her into deep water before opening the seacocks."

"Or better yet, set her on fire, along with Congresswoman Smith and the deputy director of NUMA," said Zolar, lighting a cigar.

"Police Comandante Cortina will conduct an investigation and announce that the ferryboat along with Congresswoman Smith and Rudi Gunn was lost in an unfortunate accident," said Sarason.

Zolar glared at him. "That won't solve the problem of interference from American law enforcement officials. Their Justice Department will demand more than a local investigation if Pitt survives to expose the blundering actions of your friend here."

"Forget Pitt," Amaru said flatly. "Nobody had a stronger reason for seeing him dead than me."

Oxley glanced from Amaru to Zolar. "We can't gamble on speculation. No way Cortina can hold off a joint investigation by the Mexican and American governments for more than a few days."

Sarason shrugged. "Time enough to remove the treasure and be gone."

Even if Pitt walks out of the sea to tell the truth," said Henry Moore, "it's your word against his. He can't prove your connection with the torture and disappearance of Smith and Gunn. Who would believe a family of respected art dealers was involved with such things? You might arrange for Cortina to accuse Pitt of committing these crimes so he could grab the treasure for himself."

"I approve of the professor's concept," said Zolar. "Our influential friends in the police and military can easily be persuaded to arrest Pitt if he shows his face in Mexico."

"So far so good," said Sarason. "But what about our prisoners? Do we eliminate them now or later?"

"Why not throw them in the river that runs through the treasure cavern?" suggested Amaru. "Eventually, what's left of their bodies will probably turn up in the Gulf. By the time the fish get through with them, about all a coroner will be able to determine is that they died from drowning."

Zolar looked around the room at his brothers and then to Moore who looked oddly uneasy. After a moment he turned to Amaru. "A brilliant scenario. Simple, but brilliant nonetheless. Any objections?"

There were none.

"I'll contact Comandante Cortina and brief him on his assignment," Sarason volunteered.

Zolar waved his cigar and flashed his teeth in a broad smile. "Then it's settled. While Cyrus and Cortina lay a smoke screen for American investigators, the rest of us will pack up and move from the hacienda to Cerro el Capirote and begin retrieving the gold at first light tomorrow."

One of the hacienda's servants entered and handed Zolar a portable telephone. He listened without replying to the caller. Then he switched off the phone and laughed.

"Good news, brother?" asked Oxley.

"Federal agents raided our warehouse facilities again."

"That's funny?" asked a puzzled Moore.

"A common occurrence," explained Zolar. "As usual, they came up dry and stood around like idiots with no place to go."

Sarason finished his drink. "So it's business as usual, and the treasure excavation goes on as scheduled."

The great room went silent as each man conjured up his own thoughts of what incredible riches they would find under Cerro el Capirote. All except Samson. His mind turned back to the meeting with Pitt on the ferry. He knew it was ridiculous, but it gnawed at his mind that Pitt had claimed to have led him and his brothers to the jackpot. And what did he mean when he said they had been set up?

Was Pitt merely lying or trying to tell him something, or was it sheer bravado from a man who thought he was going to die? The answers, Sarason decided, were not worth his time to ponder. The warning bells should have been clanging away in the back of his head, but there were more important issues at hand. He swept Pitt from his thoughts.

He never made a bigger mistake.

Micki Moore stepped carefully down the steep steps into the cellar beneath the hacienda as she balanced a tray. At the bottom, she approached one of Amaru's thugs who was guarding the door of a small storeroom that held the captives. "Open the door," she demanded.

"No one is allowed in," muttered the guard unpleasantly.

"Step aside, you stupid cretin," Micki snarled, "or I'll cut your balls off."

The guard was startled by the abusive coarseness from an elegant woman. He stepped back a pace. "I have my orders from Tupac Amaru."

"All I have is food, you idiot. Let me in or I'll scream and swear to Joseph Zolar you raped me and the woman inside."

He peered at the tray and then gave in, unlocking the door and stepping aside. "You do not tell Tupac of this."

"Don't worry," Micki snapped over her shoulder as she entered the dark and stuffy cubicle. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. Gunn was lying on the stone floor. He struggled to a sitting position. Loren was standing as if to protect him.

"Well, well," murmured Loren testily. "This time they sent a woman to do their filthy work."

Micki pushed the tray into Loren's hands. "Here is some food. Fruit and sandwiches, and four bottles of beer. Take it!" Then she turned and slammed the door shut in the guard's face. When she refaced Loren, her eyes had become more accustomed to the dark. She was stunned at Loren's appearance. She could make out puffy bruises on her lips and around the eyes. Most of Loren's clothing had been torn away and she had knotted what little remained to cover her torso. Micki also saw livid red welts across the top of her breasts and discolorations on her arms and legs. "The bastards!" she hissed. "The no-good sadistic bastards. I'm sorry, if I had known you'd been beaten, I would have brought medical supplies."

Loren knelt and set the tray on the floor. She gave one of the bottles of beer to Gunn, but his injured hands could not twist off the cap. She removed it for him.

"Who is our Florence Nightingale?" asked Gunn.

"I'm Micki Moore. My husband is an anthropologist, and I'm an archaeologist hired by the Zolars."

"To help them find Huascar's golden treasure?" Gunn rightly guessed.

"Yes, we deciphered the images--"

"On the Golden Body Suit of Tiapollo," finished Gunn. "We know all about it."

Loren didn't speak for a few moments while she ravenously consumed one of the sandwiches and downed a beer. Finally, feeling almost as if she had been reborn, she stared at Micki curiously. "Why are you doing this? To build up our spirits before they come back and use us for punching bags again?"

"We're not part of your ordeal," Micki replied honestly. "The truth is, Zolar and his brothers are planning to kill my husband and me as soon as they've recovered the treasure."

"How could you know that?"

"We've been around people like these before. We have a feel for what's going on."

"What do they plan on doing with us?" asked Gunn.

"The Zolars and their bribed cronies with the Mexican police and military intend to make it look as if you drowned while attempting to escape your sinking ferryboat. Their plan is to throw you in the underground river the ancients mentioned that runs through the treasure chamber and empties into the sea. By the time your bodies surface, there won't be enough left to prove otherwise."

"Sounds feasible," Loren muttered angrily. "I give them credit for that."

"My God," said Gunn. "They just can't murder a representative of the United States Congress in cold blood."

"Believe me," said Micki, "these men have no scruples and even less conscience."

"How come they haven't killed us before now?" asked Loren.

"Their fear was that your friend Pitt might somehow expose your kidnapping. Now they no longer care. They figure their charade is strong enough to stand against one man's accusations."

"What about the ferryboat's crew?" asked Loren. "They were witnesses to the piracy."

"They'll be kept from raising the alarm by local police." Micki hesitated. "I'm sorry to have to tell you why they are no longer concerned about Pitt. Tupac Amaru swears that after you were transported to the hacienda, he and his men crushed Pitt to jelly by throwing concussion grenades at him in the water."

Loren's violet eyes were grief-stricken. Until now she had harbored a hope Pitt had somehow escaped. Now her heart felt as though it had fallen into the crevasse of a glacier. She sagged against one wall of the stone room and covered her face with her hands.

Gunn pushed himself to his feet. There was no grief in his eyes, only iron-hard conviction. "Dirk dead? Scum like Amaru could never kill a man like Dirk Pitt."

Micki was startled by the fiery spirit of a man so sorely tortured. "I only know what my husband told me," she said as if apologizing. "Amaru did admit he failed to retrieve Pitt's body, but there was little doubt in his mind that Pitt could not have survived."

"You say you and your husband are also on Zolar's death list?" asked Loren.

Micki shrugged. "Yes, we're to be silenced too."

"If you'll pardon me for saying so," said Gunn, "you seem pretty damned indifferent."

"My husband also has plans."

"To escape?"

"No, Henry and I can break out any time it's convenient. We intend to take a share of the treasure for ourselves."

Gunn stared at Micki incredulously. Then he said cynically, "Your husband must be one tough anthropologist."

Perhaps you might better understand if I told you we met and fell in love when working on an assignment together for the Foreign Activities Council."

"Never heard of it," said Gunn.

Loren gave Micki a bemused stare. "I have. FAC is rumored to be an obscure and highly secret organization that works behind the scenes in the White House. No one in Congress has ever been able to come up with solid proof of its existence or its financing."

"What is its function?" asked Gunn.

"To carry out covert activities under the direct supervision of the President outside the nation's other intelligence services without their knowledge," replied Micki.

"What kind of activities?"

"Dirty tricks on foreign nations considered hostile to the United States," replied Loren, studying Micki for some kind of sign. But her expression was aloof and remote. "As a mere member of Congress I'm not privy to their operations and can only speculate. I have a suspicion their primary directive is to carry out assassinations."

Micki's eyes turned hard and cold. "I freely admit that for twelve years, until we retired from service to devote our time to archaeology, Henry and I had few peers."

"I'm not surprised," Loren said sarcastically. "By passing yourselves off as scientists, you were never suspected of being the President's hired killers."

"For your information, Congresswoman Smith, our academic credentials are not counterfeit. Henry has his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania and I have mine from Stanford. We have no misgivings about the duties we performed under three former Presidents. By eliminating certain heads of foreign terrorist organizations, Henry and I saved more American lives than you can imagine."

"Who are you working for now?"

"Ourselves. As I said, we retired. We felt it was time to cash in our expertise. Our government service is a thing of the past. Though we were well paid for our services, we weren't considered for a pension."

"Tigers aren't known for changing stripes," mocked Gunn. "You can never achieve your objective without killing off Amaru and the Zolars."

Micki smiled faintly. "We may very well have to do unto them before they can do unto us. But only after enough of Huascar's gold is brought to the surface for us to carry out."

"So the trail will be littered with bodies."

Micki passed a weary hand over her face. "Your involvement in the treasure hunt came as a complete surprise to everybody. Stupidly, the Zolars overreacted when they discovered another party was on the trail to the gold. They ran amok, murdering or abducting everyone their greed-crazed minds saw as an obstacle. Consider yourselves lucky they didn't murder you on the ferryboat like your friend Pitt. Keeping you alive temporarily is the hallmark of rank amateurs."

"You and your husband," murmured Loren caustically, "you would have--"

"Shot you and burned the boat down around your bodies?" Micki shook her head. "Not our style. Henry and I have only terminated those foreign nationals who have indiscriminately gunned down unfortunate women and children or blew them to pieces without blinking an eye or shedding a tear. We have never harmed a fellow American, and we don't intend to start now. Despite the fact your presence has hamstrung our operation, we will do everything in our power to help you escape this affair in one piece."

"The Zolars are Americans," Loren reminded her.

Micki shrugged. "A mere technicality. They represent what is perhaps the largest art theft and smuggling ring in history. The Zolars are world-class sharks. Why should I have to tell you? You've experienced their brutality firsthand. By leaving their bones to bleach in the Sonoran Desert, Henry and I figure to save the American taxpayers millions of dollars that would be spent on a complicated and time-consuming investigation into their criminal activities. And then there are the court and prison costs if they're caught and convicted."

"And once a portion of the treasure is in your hands?" asked Gunn. "What then?"

Micki smiled like a wily shrew. "I'll send you a postcard from whatever part of the world we're in at the time and let you know how we're spending it."

A small army of soldiers set up a command post and sealed off the desert for two miles around the base of Cerro el Capirote. No one was allowed in or out. The mountain's peak had become a staging area with all treasure recovery operations conducted from the air. Pitt's stolen NUMA helicopter, repainted with Zolar International colors, lifted into a clear sky and dipped on a course back to the hacienda. A few minutes later, a heavy Mexican army transport helicopter hovered and settled down. A detachment of military engineers in desert combat fatigues jumped to the ground, opened the rear cargo door and began unloading a small forklift, coils of cable, and a large winch.

Officials of the state of Sonora who were on the Zolars' payroll had approved all the necessary licenses and permits within twenty-four hours, a process that would normally have taken months and perhaps years. The Zolars had promised to fund new schools, roads, and a hospital. Their cash had greased the palms of the local bureaucracy and eliminated the usual rivers of red tape. Full cooperation was given by an unwitting Mexican government misled by corrupt bureaucrats. Joseph Zolar's request for a contingent of engineers from a military base on the Baja Peninsula was quickly approved. Under the terms of a swiftly drawn up contract with the Ministry of the Treasury, the Zolars were entitled to 25 percent of the treasure. The rest was to be deposited with the national court in Mexico City.

The only problem with the agreement was that the Zolars had no intention of keeping their end of the bargain. They weren't about to split the treasure with anyone.

Once the golden chain and the bulk of the treasure had been hauled to the top of the mountain, a covert operation was created to move the hoard under cover of darkness to a remote military airstrip near the great sand dunes of the Altar Desert just south of the Arizona border. There, it would be loaded aboard a commercial jet transport, painted with the markings and colors of a major airline company, and then flown to a secret distribution facility owned by the Zolars in the small city of Nador on the north coast of Morocco.

Everyone had been ferried from the hacienda to the mountaintop as soon as it became daylight. No personal effects were left behind. Only Zolar's jetliner remained, parked on the hacienda's airstrip, ready for takeoff on a moment's notice.

Loren and Rudi were released from their prison and sent over later the same morning. Ignoring Sarason's orders not to communicate with the hostages, Micki Moore had compassionately tended to their cuts and bruises and made sure they were fed a decent meal. Since there was little chance they could escape by climbing down the rocky walls of the mountain, no one guarded them and they were left on their own to wander about as they pleased.

Oxley quickly discovered the small aperture leading inside the mountain and wasted no time in directing a military work crew to enlarge it. He stayed behind to oversee the equipment staging while Zolar, Sarason, and the Moores set off down the passageway followed by a squad of engineers, who carried portable fluorescent lights.

When they reached the second demon, Micki lovingly touched its eyes, just as Shannon Kelsey had done before her. She sighed. "A marvelous piece of work."

"Beautifully preserved," Henry Moore agreed.

"It will have to be destroyed," said Sarason indifferently.

"What are you talking about?" demanded Moore.

"We can't move it. The ugly beast fills up most of the tunnel. There is no way we can drag Huascar's chain over, around, or between its legs."

Micki's face went tense with shock. "You can't destroy a masterwork of antiquity."

"We can and we will," Zolar said, backing his brother. "I agree it's unfortunate. But we don't have time for archaeological zealotry. The sculpture has to go."

Moore's pained expression slowly turned hard, and he looked at his wife and nodded. "Sacrifices must be made."

Micki understood. If they were to seize enough of the golden riches to keep them in luxury for the rest of their lives, they would have to close their eyes to the demolition of the demon.

They pushed on as Sarason lagged behind and ordered the engineers to place a charge of explosives under the demon. "Be careful," he warned them in Spanish. "Use a small charge. We don't want to cause a cave-in."

Zolar was amazed at the Moores' vast energy and enthusiasm after they encountered the crypt of the treasure guardians. If left on their own, they would have spent a week studying the mummies and the burial ornaments before pushing on to the treasure chamber.

"Let's keep going," said Zolar impatiently. "You can nose around the dead later."

Reluctantly, the Moores continued into the guardians' living quarters, lingering only a few minutes before Sarason rejoined his brother and urged them onward.

The sudden sight of the guardian encased in calcite crystals shocked and stunned all of them, as it had Pitt and his group. Henry Moore peered intently through the translucent sarcophagus.

"An ancient Chachapoya," he murmured as if standing before a crucifix. "Preserved as he died. This is an unbelievable discovery."

"He must have been a noble warrior of very high status," said Micki in awe.

"A logical conclusion, my dear. This man had to be very powerful to bear the responsibility of guarding an immense royal treasure."

"What do you think he's worth?" asked Sarason.

Moore turned and scowled at him. "You can't set a price on such an extraordinary object. As a window to the past, he is priceless."

"I know a collector who would give five million dollars for him," said Zolar, as if he were appraising a Ming vase.

"The Chachapoya warrior belongs to science," Moore lashed back, his anger choking him. "He is a visible link to the past and belongs in a museum, not in the living room of some morally corrupt gatherer of stolen artifacts."

Zolar threw Moore an insidious look. "All right, Professor, he's yours for your share of the gold."

Moore looked agonized. His professional training as a scientist fought a war with his greed. He felt dirtied and ashamed now that he realized that Huascar's legacy went beyond mere wealth. He was overcome with regret that he was dealing with unscrupulous scum. He gripped his wife's hand, knowing without doubt she felt the same. "If that's what it takes. You've got yourself a deal."

Zolar laughed. "Now that's settled. Can we please proceed and find what we came here for?"

A few minutes later, they stood in a shoulder-to-shoulder line on the edge of the subterranean riverbank and stared mesmerized at the array of gold, highlighted by the portable fluorescent lamps carried by the military engineers. All they saw was the treasure. The sight of a river flowing through the bowels of the earth seemed insignificant.

"Spectacular," whispered Zolar. "I can't believe I'm looking at so much gold."

"This easily exceeds the treasures of King Tut's tomb," said Moore.

"How magnificent," said Micki, clutching her husband's arm. "This has to be the richest cache in all the Americas."

Sarason's amazement quickly wore off. "Very clever of those ancient bastards," he charged. "Storing the treasure on an island surrounded by a strong current makes recovery doubly complicated."

"Yes, but we've got cables and winches," said Moore.

INCA GOLD

"Think of the difficulty they had in moving all that gold over there with nothing but hemp rope and muscle."

Micki spied a golden monkey crouched on a pedestal. "That's odd."

Zolar looked at her. "What's odd?"

She stepped closer to the monkey and its pedestal which was lying on its side. "Why would this piece still be on this bank of the river?"

"Yes, it does seem strange this object wasn't placed with the others," said Moore. "It almost looks as if it was thrown here."

Sarason pointed to gouges in the sand and calcium crystals beside the riverbank. "I'd say it was dragged off the island."

"It has writing scratched on it," said Moore.

"Can you decipher anything?" asked Zolar.

"Doesn't need deciphering. The markings are in English."

Sarason and Zolar stared at him with the expressions of Wall Street bankers walking along the sidewalk and being asked by a homeless derelict if they could spare fifty thousand dollars. "No jokes, Professor," said Zolar.

"I'm dead serious. Somebody engraved a message into the soft gold on the bottom of the pedestal, quite recently by the looks of it."

"What does it say?"

Moore motioned for an engineer to aim his lamp at the monkey's pedestal, adjusted his glasses and began reading aloud.

Welcome members of the Solpemachaco to the underground thieves and plunderers annual convention.

If you have any ambitions in life other than the acquisition of stolen loot, you have come to the right place.

Be our guests and take only the objects you can use.

Your congenial sponsors,

Dr. Shannon Kelsey, Miles Rodgers, Al Giordino, & Dirk Pitt.

There was a moment of sober realization, and then Zolar snarled at his brother. "What in hell is going on here? What kind of foolish trick is this?"

Sarason's mouth was pinched in a bitter line. "Pitt admitted leading us to the demon," he answered reluctantly, "but he said nothing of entering the mountain and laying eyes on the treasure."

"Generous with his information, wasn't he? Why didn't you tell me this?"

Sarason shrugged. "He's dead. I didn't think it mattered."

Micki turned to her husband. "I know Dr. Kelsey. I met her at an archaeology conference in San Antonio. She has a splendid reputation as an expert on Andean cultures."

Moore nodded. "Yes, I'm familiar with her work." He stared at Sarason. "You led us to believe Congresswoman Smith and the men from NUMA were merely on a treasure hunt. You said nothing of involvement by professional archaeologists."

"Does it make any difference?"

"Something is going on beyond your control," warned Moore. He looked as if he was enjoying the Zolars' confusion. "If I were you, I'd get the gold out of here as fast as possible."

His words were punctuated by a muffled explosion far up into the passageway.

"We have nothing to fear so long as Pitt is dead," Sarason kept insisting. "What you see here was done before Amaru put a stop to him." But he was damp with cold sweat. Pitt's mocking words rang in his ears, "You've been set up, pal."

Zolar's features slowly altered. The mouth tightened and the set of the jaw seemed to recede, the eyes became apprehensive. "Nobody discovers a treasure on the magnitude of this one, leaves behind a ridiculous message, and then walks away from it. These people have a method to their madness, and I for one would like to know their plan."

"Any man who stands in our way before the treasure is safely off the mountain will be destroyed," Sarason shouted at his brother. "That is a promise."

The words came forcefully, with the ring of a bullet resistant threat. They all believed him. Except Micki Moore.

She was the only one standing close enough to see his lips quiver.

Bureaucrats from around the world looked the same, Pitt thought. The fabricated meaningless smile betrayed by the patronizing look in the eyes. They must have all gone to the same school and memorized the same canned speech of evasive phrases. This one was bald, wore thick hornrimmed glasses, and had a black moustache with each bristle exactingly trimmed.

A tall, complacent man, whose profile and haughtiness reminded the Americans seated around the conference room of a Spanish conquistador, Fernando Matos was the very essence of a condescending, fence-and-dodge bureaucrat. He stared at the Americans in the Customs building less than 100 meters (328 feet) from the international border.

Admiral James Sandecker, who had arrived from Washington shortly after Gaskill and Ragsdale flew in from Galveston, stared back and said nothing. Shannon, Rodgers, and Giordino were relegated to chairs against one wall while Pitt sat at Sandecker's right. They left the talking to the chief Customs agent of the region, Curtis Starger.

A veteran of sixteen years with the service, Starger had been around the Horn enough times to have seen it all. He was a trim, handsome man with sharp features and blond hair. He looked more like an aging lifeguard on a San Diego beach than a hardened agent who gazed at Matos with an expression that could scorch asbestos. After the introductions were made, he launched his attack.

"I'll skip the niceties, Mr. Matos. On matters such as this I'm used to dealing with your elite law enforcement agents, especially Inspector Granados and the chief of your Northern Mexico Investigative Division, Sefior Rojas. I wish you would explain, sir, why a midlevel official from an obscure office of the National Affairs Department was sent to brief us on the situation. I get the feeling that your national government in Mexico City is as much in the dark as we are."

Matos made a helpless gesture with his hands. His eyes never blinked, and his smile remained fixed. If he felt insulted, it didn't show. "Inspector Granados is working on a case in Hermosillo and Sefior Rojas was taken ill."

"Sorry to hear it," Starger grunted insincerely.

"If they were not indisposed or on duties elsewhere, I'm certain they would have been happy to consult with you. I share your frustration. But I assure you, my government will do everything in its power to cooperate on this matter."

"The United States Attorney's Office has reason to believe that three men going under the names of Joseph Zolar, Charles Oxley, and Cyrus Sarason, all brothers, are conducting a massive international operation dealing in stolen art, smuggled artifacts, and art forgery. We also have reason to believe they have abducted one of our respected congressional legislators and an official of our most prestigious marine science agency."

Matos smiled blandly behind his bureaucratic defenses. "Utterly ridiculous. As you very well know, gentlemen, after your fruitless raid on the Zolars' facilities in Texas, their reputation remains untarnished."

Gaskill smiled wryly at Ragsdale. "News travels fast."

"These men you seem intent on persecuting have violated no laws in Mexico. We have no legal cause to investigate them."

"What are you doing about securing the release of Congresswoman Smith and Deputy Director Gunn?"

"Our finest investigative police teams are working on the case," Matos assured him. "My superiors have already made arrangements to pay the ransom demands. And I can guarantee it is only a question of a few hours before the bandits responsible for this travesty are captured and your people rescued unharmed."

"Our sources claim the Zolars are the criminals who are responsible."

Matos shook his head. "No, no, the evidence proves a gang of thieving bandits is behind the abduction."

Pitt joined in the fray. "Speaking of abductions, what about the crew of the ferryboat? Where did they disappear to?"

Matos gazed at Pitt contemptuously. "That is of no importance here. As a matter of record, our police officials have four signed statements naming you as the instigator of this plot."

Resentment surged through Pitt. The Zolars had cunningly planned every contingency, but they had either ignored the fact the crew of the Alhambra were not dead or Amaru had botched the job and lied. Padilla and his men must have made shore and been put under wraps by the local police.

"Were your investigators as thoughtful in providing me with a motive?" asked Pitt.

"Motives do not concern me, Mr. Pitt. I rely on evidence. But since you brought it up, the crew claims you killed Congresswoman Smith and Rudi Gunn to gain the location of the treasure."

"Your police officials have Alzheimer's disease if they swallow that," snapped Giordino.

"Evidence is evidence," Matos said smoothly. "As an official of the government I must operate within strict legal parameters."

Pitt took the ridiculous accusation in stride and sneaked in from the side. "Tell me, Sefior Matos, what percentage of the gold will you take as your share?"

"Five--" Matos caught himself too late.

"Were you about to say five percent, sir?" Starger asked softly.

Matos tilted his head and shrugged. "I was about to say nothing of the sort."

"I'd say your superiors have turned a blind eye to a deep conspiracy," said Sandecker.

"There is no conspiracy, Admiral. I'll take an oath on

"What you're broadcasting," said Gaskill, leaning across the table, "is that officials of the Sonoran State government have struck a deal with the Zolars to keep the Peruvian treasure."

Matos lifted a hand. "The Peruvians have no legal claim. All artifacts found on Mexican soil belong to our people--"

"They belong to the people of Peru," Shannon interrupted, her face flushed with anger. "If your government had any sense of decency, they would invite the Peruvians to at least share in it."

"Affairs between nations do not work that way, Dr. Kelsey," replied Matos.

"How would you like it if Montezuma's lost golden treasure turned up in the Andes?"

"I'm not in a position to judge outlandish events," Matos answered imperviously. "Besides, rumors of the treasure are greatly exaggerated. Its true value is really of little consequence."

Shannon looked flabbergasted. "What are you saying? I saw Huascar's treasure with my own eyes. If anything, it's far more substantial than anyone thought. I put its potential value at just under a billion dollars."

"The Zolars are respected dealers who have a worldwide reputation for accurately appraising art and antiquities. Their evaluation of the treasure does not exceed thirty million."

"Mister," Shannon snapped in cold fury, "I'll match my credentials against theirs any day of the week in appraising artifacts of ancient Peruvian cultures. I'll put it to you in plain language. The Zolars are full of crap."

"Your word against theirs," Matos said calmly.

"For a small treasure trove," said Ragsdale, "they appear to be mounting a massive recovery effort."

"Five or ten laborers to carry the gold out of the cavern. No more."

"Would you like to see reconnaissance satellite photos that show the top of Cerro el Capirote looking like an anthill with an army of men and helicopters crawling all over it?"

Matos sat silently, as if he hadn't heard a word.

"And the Zolars' payoff?" asked Starger. "Are you allowing them to remove artifacts from the country?"

"Their efforts on behalf of the people of Sonora will not go unappreciated. They will be compensated."

It was an obvious fish story and nobody in the room bought it.

Admiral Sandecker was the highest American official in the room. He stared at Matos and gave him a disarming smile. "I will be meeting with our nation's President tomorrow morning. At that time I will brief him on the alarming events occurring in our neighbor to the south, and inform him that your law enforcement officials are dragging their feet on the investigation and throwing up a smoke screen on the kidnapping of our high-level representatives. I need not remind you, Senor Matos, the free trade agreement is coming up for review by Congress. When our representatives are informed of your callous treatment of one of their colleagues, and how you cooperate with criminals dealing in stolen and smuggled art, they may find it difficult to continue our mutual trade relations. In short, senor, your President wild have a major scandal on his hands."

Matos's eyes behind the glasses were suddenly stricken. "There is no need for so strong a response over a minor disagreement between our two countries."

Pitt noticed thin beads of perspiration on the Mexican official's head. He turned to his boss from NUMA. "I'm hardly an expert on executive politics, Admiral, but what do you want to bet the President of Mexico and his cabinet have not been informed of the true situation?"

"I suspect you'd win," said Sandecker. "That would explain why we're not talking to a major player."

The color had drained from Matos's face, and he looked positively sick. "You misunderstand, my nation stands ready to cooperate in every way possible."

"You tell your superiors in the National Affairs Department," said Pitt, "or whoever you really work for, that they aren't as smart as they thought."

"The meeting is over," said Starger. "We'll consider our options and inform your government of our actions this time tomorrow."

Matos tried to retrieve a shred of dignity. He stared balefully and when he spoke his voice was quieter. "I must warn you of any attempt to send your Special Forces into Mexico--"

Sandecker cut him off. "I'll give you twenty-four hours to send Congresswoman Smith and my deputy director, Rudi Gunn, over the border crossing between Mexicali and Calexico unharmed. One minute later and a lot of people will get hurt."

"You do not have the authority to make threats."

"Once I tell my President your security forces are torturing Smith and Gunn for state secrets, there is no telling how he will react."

Matos looked horrified. "But that is a total lie, an absurd fabrication."

Sandecker smiled icily. "See, I know how to invent situations too."

"I give you my word

"That will be all, Senor Matos," said Starger. "Please keep my office apprised of any further incidents."

When the Mexican official left the conference room, he looked like a man who had stood by and watched as his wife ran off with the plumber and his dog was run over by a milk truck. As soon as he was gone, Ragsdale, who had sat back and quietly absorbed the conversation, turned to Gaskill.

"Well, if nothing else, they don't know we knocked over their illegal storage facility."

"Let's hope they remain in the dark for another two days."

"Did you take an inventory of the stolen goods?" asked Pitt.

"The quantity was so great, it will take weeks to thoroughly itemize every object."

"Do you recall seeing any Southwestern Indian religious idols, carved from cottonwood?"

Gaskill shook his head. "No, nothing like that."

"Please let me know if you do. I have an Indian friend who would like them back."

Ragsdale nodded at Sandecker. "How do you read the situation, Admiral?" he asked.

"The Zolars have promised the moon," Sandecker said. "I'm beginning to believe that if they were arrested, half the citizenry of the state of Sonora would rise up and break them out of jail."

"They'll never allow Loren and Rudi to go free and talk," said Pitt.

"I hate to be the one to mention it," Ragsdale said quietly, "but they could already be dead."

Pitt shook his head. "I won't let myself believe that."

Sandecker rose and began working off his frustration by pacing the floor. "Even if the President approves a clandestine entry, our special response team has no intelligence to guide them to the location where Loren and Rudi are held captive."

"I have an idea the Zolars are holding them on the mountain," said Giordino.

Starger nodded in agreement. "You might be right. The hacienda they used as a headquarters to conduct the treasure search appears deserted."

Ragsdale sighed. "If Smith and Gunn are still alive, I fear it won't be for long."

"We can do nothing but look helplessly through the fence," said Starger in frustration.

Ragsdale stared out the window across the border. "The FBI can't launch a raid onto Mexican soil."

"Nor Customs," said Gaskill.

Pitt looked at the federal agents for a moment. Then he addressed himself directly to Sandecker. "They can't, but NUMA can."

They all looked at him, uncomprehending.

"We can what?" asked Sandecker.

"Go into Mexico and rescue Loren and Rudi without creating an international incident."

"Sure you will." Gaskill laughed. "Getting across the border is no trick, but the Zolars have the Sonoran police and military on their side. Satellite photos show heavy security on top and around the base of Cerro el Capirote. You couldn't get within ten kilometers without getting shot."

"I wasn't planning on driving or hiking to the mountain," said Pitt.

Starger looked at him and grinned. "What can the National Underwater and Marine Agency do that Customs and the FBI can't? Swim over the desert?"

"No, not over," said Pitt in a deadly earnest voice. "Under."

NIGHTMARE PASSAGE

October 31, 1998

Satan's Sink, Baja, Mexico

In the parched foothills on the northern end of the Sierra el Mayor Mountains, almost 50 kilometers (31 miles) due south of Mexicali, there is a borehole, a naturally formed tunnel, in the side of a cliff. Carved millions of years ago by the turbulent action of an ancient sea, the corridor slopes downward to the bottom of a small cavern, sculpted from the volcanic rock by Pliocene epoch water and more recently by windblown sand. There on the floor of the cavern a pool of water emerges from beneath the desert. Except for a tint of cobalt blue, the water is so clear as to appear invisible and from ground level the sinkhole looks to be bottomless.

Satan's Sink was shaped nothing like the sacrificial pool in Peru, Pitt thought, as he gazed at the yellow nylon line trailing into the transparent depths. He sat on a rock at the edge of the water, his eyes shaded with a look of concern, hands lightly grasping the nylon line whose end was wound around the drum of a compact reel.

Outside, 80 meters (262 feet) above the bottom of the tubular borehole, Admiral Sandecker sat in a lawn chair beside a ravaged and rusting 1951 Chevy half-ton pickup truck with a faded camper in the bed that looked as though it should have been recycled years ago. Another automobile was parked behind it, a very tired and worn 1968 Plymouth Belvedere station wagon. Both had Baja California Norte license plates.

Sandecker held a can of Coors beer in one hand as he lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes with the other and scrutinized the surrounding landscape. He was dressed to complement the old truck, having the appearance of any one of thousands of retired American vagabonds who travel and camp around the Baja Peninsula on the cheap.

He was surprised to find so many flowering plants in the Sonoran Desert, despite scant water and a climate that runs from subfreezing nights in the winter to a summer heat that produces furnace temperatures. Far off in the distance he watched a small herd of horses grazing on bunchgrass.

Satisfied the only life within his immediate area was a red diamondback rattler sunning itself on a rock and a black tailed jackrabbit that hopped up to him, took one look, and leaped away, he rose from his lawn chair and ambled down the slope of the borehole to the pool.

"Any sign of the law?" asked Pitt at the admiral's approach.

Nothing around here but snakes and rabbits," grunted Sandecker. He nodded toward the water. "How long have they been down?"

Pitt glanced at his watch. "Thirty-eight minutes."

"I'd feel a whole lot better if they were using professional equipment instead of old dive gear borrowed from local Customs agents."

"Every minute counts if we're to save Loren and Rudi. By doing an exploratory survey now to see if my plan has the slightest chance of succeeding, we save six hours. The same time it takes for our state-of-the-art equipment to arrive in Calexico from Washington."

"Sheer madness to attempt such a dangerous operation," said Sandecker in a tired voice.

"Do we have an alternative?"

"None that comes to mind."

"Then we must give it a try," said Pitt firmly.

"You don't even know yet if you have the slightest prospect of--"

"They've signaled," Pitt interrupted the admiral as the line tautened in his hands. "They're on their way up."

Together, Pitt pulling in on the line, Sandecker holding the reel between his knees and turning the crank, they began hauling in the two divers who were somewhere deep inside the sinkhole on the other end of the 200-meter 460(656-foot) line. A long fifteen minutes later, breathing heavily, they brought in the red knot that signified the third fifty-meter mark.

"Only fifty meters to go," Sandecker commented heavily. He pulled on the reel as he cranked, trying to ease the strain on Pitt who did the major share of the work. The admiral was a health enthusiast, jogged several miles a day, and occasionally worked out in the NUMA headquarters health spa, but the exertion of pulling dead weight without a time-out pushed his heart rate close to the red line. "I see them," he panted thankfully.

Gratefully, Pitt let go of the line and sagged to a sitting position to catch his breath. "They can ascend on their own from there."

Giordino was the first of the two divers to surface. He removed his twin air tanks and hoisted them to Sandecker. Then he offered a hand to Pitt who leaned back and heaved him out of the water. The next man up was Dr. Peter Duncan, a U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist, who had arrived in Calexico by chartered jet only an hour after Sandecker contacted him in San Diego. At first he thought the admiral was joking about an underground river, but curiosity overcame his skepticism and he dropped everything to join in the exploratory dive. He spit out the mouthpiece to his air regulator.

"I never envisioned a water source that extensive," he said between deep breaths.

"You found an access to the river," Pitt stated., not asked, happily.

"The sinkhole drops about sixty meters before it meets a horizontal feeding stream that runs a hundred and twenty meters through a series of narrow fissures to the river," explained Giordino.

Can we gain passage for the float equipment?" Pitt queried.

"It gets a little tight in places, but I think we can squeeze it through."

"The water temperature?"

"A cool but bearable twenty degrees Celsius, about sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit."

Duncan pulled off his hood, revealing the great bush of a red beard. He made no effort to climb from the pool. He rested his arms on the bank and babbled in excitement. "I didn't believe it when you described a wide river with a current of nine knots under the Sonoran Desert. Now that I've seen it with my own eyes, I still don't believe it. I'd guess anywhere from ten to fifteen million acre-feet of water a year is flowing down there."

"Do you think it's the same underground stream that flows under Cerro el Capirote?" asked Sandecker.

"No doubt about it," answered Duncan. "Now that I've seen the river exists with my own eyes, I'd be willing to gamble it's the same stream that Leigh Hunt claimed runs beneath the Castle Dome Mountains."

"So Hunt's canyon of gold probably exists." Pitt smiled.

"You know about that legend?"

"No legend now."

A delighted look crossed Duncan's face. "No, I guess not, I'm happy to say."

"Good thing we were tied to a fixed guideline," said Giordino.

Duncan nodded. "I couldn't agree more. Without it, we would have been swept away by the river when we emerged from the feeder stream."

"And joined those two divers who ended up in the Gulf."

I can't help but wonder where the source is," mused Sandecker.

Giordino rubbed a hand through his curly mop. "The latest in geophysical ground-penetrating instruments should have no problem tracking the course."

"There is no predicting what a discovery of this magnitude means to the drought-plagued Southwest," said Duncan, still aroused by what he'd seen. "The benefits could result in thousands of jobs, millions of acres brought under cultivation, pasture for livestock. We might even see the desert turned into a Garden of Eden."

"The thieves will drown in the water that makes the desert into a garden," Pitt said, staring into the crystal blue pool and remembering Billy Yuma's words.

"What was that you said?" asked Giordino curiously.

Pitt shook his head and smiled. "An old Indian proverb."

After carrying the dive equipment up to the surface entrance of the borehole, Giordino and Duncan stripped off their suits while Sandecker loaded their gear into the Plymouth station wagon. The admiral came over as Pitt drove alongside in the old pickup and stopped.

"I'll meet you back here in two hours," he notified Sandecker.

"Mind telling us where you're going?"

"I have to see a man about raising an army."

"Anybody I know?"

"No, but if things go half as well as I hope, you'll be shaking his hand and pinning a medal on him by the time the sun goes down."

Gaskill and Ragsdale were waiting at the small airport west of Calexico on the United States side of the border when the NUMA plane landed and taxied up to a large Customs Service van. They had begun transferring the underwater survival equipment to the van from the cargo hatch of the plane when Sandecker and Giordino arrived in the station wagon.

The pilot came over and shook their hands. "We had to hustle to assemble your shopping list, but we managed to scrounge every piece of gear you requested."

"Were our engineers able to lower the profile of the Hovercraft as Pitt requested?" asked Giordino.

"A miraculous crash job." The pilot smiled. "But the admiral's mechanical whiz kids said to tell you they modified the Wallowing Windbag down to a maximum height of sixty-one centimeters."

"I'll thank everyone personally when I return to Washington," said Sandecker warmly.

"Would you like me to head back?" the pilot asked the admiral. "Or stand by here?"

"Stick by your aircraft in case we need you."

They had just finished loading the van and were closing the rear cargo doors when Curtis Starger came racing across the airstrip in a gray Customs vehicle. He braked to a stop and came from behind the wheel as if shot out of a cannon.

"We got problems," he announced.

"What kind of problems?" Gaskill demanded.

"Mexican Border Police just closed down their side of the border to all U.S. traffic entering Mexico."

"What about commercial traffic?"

"That too. They also added insult to injury by putting up a flock of military helicopters with orders to force down all intruding aircraft and stop any vehicle that looks suspicious."

Ragsdale looked at Sandecker. "They must be onto your fishing expedition."

"I don't think so. No one saw us enter or leave the borehole."

Starger laughed. "What do you want to bet that after Senor Matos ran back and reported our hard stand to the Zolars, they frothed at the mouth and coerced their buddies in the government to raise the drawbridge."

"That would be my guess," agreed Ragsdale. "They were afraid we'd come charging in like the Light Brigade."

Gaskill looked around. "Where's Pitt?"

"He's safe on. the other side," replied Giordino.

Sandecker struck the side of the aircraft with his fist. "To come this close," he muttered angrily. "A bust, a goddamned bust."

There must be some way we can get these people and their gear back to Satan's Sink," said Ragsdale to his fellow federal agents.

Starger and Gaskill matched crafty grins. "Oh, I think the Customs Service can save the day," said Starger.

"You two got something up your sleeves?"

"The Escobar affair," Starger revealed. "Familiar with it?"

Ragsdale nodded. "The underground drug smuggling operation."

Juan Escobar lived just across the border in Mexico," Starger explained to Sandecker and Giordino, "but operated a truck repair garage on this side. He smuggled in a number of large narcotics shipments before the Drug Enforcement Agency got wise to him. In a cooperative investigation our agents discovered a tunnel running a hundred and fifty meters from his house under the border fence to his repair shop. We were too late for an arrest. Escobar somehow got antsy, shut down his operation before we could nail him, and disappeared along with his family."

"One of our agents," added Gaskill, "a Hispanic who was born and raised in East Los Angeles, lives in Escobar's former house and commutes through the border crossing, posing as the new owner of Escobar's truck repair shop."

Starger smiled with pride. "The DEA and Customs have made over twenty arrests on information that came to him from other drug traffickers wanting to use the tunnel."

"Are you saying it's still open?" asked Sandecker.

"You'd be surprised how often it comes in handy for the good guys," answered Starger.

Giordino looked like a man offered salvation. "Can we get our stuff through to the other side?"

Starger nodded. "We simply drive the van into the repair shop. I'll get some men to help us carry your equipment under the border to Escobar's house, then load it into our undercover agent's parts truck out of sight in the garage. The vehicle is well known over there, so there is no reason why you'd be stopped."

Sandecker looked at Giordino. "Well," he said solemnly, "are you ready to write your obituary?"

The stone demon stoically ignored the activity around him as if biding his time. He did not feel, nor could he turn his head and see, the recent gouges and craters in his body and remaining wing, shot there by laughing Mexican soldiers who used him for target practice when their officers had disappeared into the mountain. Something within the carved stone sensed that its menacing eyes would still be surveying the ageless desert centuries after the intruding humans had died and passed beyond memory into the afterworld.

A shadow passed over the demon for the fifth time that morning as a sleek craft dropped from the sky and settled onto the only open space large enough for it to land, a narrow slot between two army helicopters and the big winch with its equally large auxiliary power unit.

In the rear passenger seat of the blue and green police helicopter, Police Comandante of Baja Norte Rafael Corona stared thoughtfully out the window at the turmoil on the mountaintop. His eyes wandered to the malevolent expression of the stone demon. It seemed to stare back at him.

Aged sixty-five, he contemplated his coming retirement without joy. He did not look forward to a life of boredom in a small house overlooking the bay at Ensenada, existing on a pension that would permit few luxuries. His square, brown-skinned face reflected a solid career that went back forty-five years. Corona had never E been popular with his fellow officers. Hardworking, straight as an arrow, he had prided himself on never taking a bribe. Not one peso in all his years on the force. Though he never faulted others for accepting graft under the table from known criminals or shady businessmen seeking to sidestep investigations, neither did he condone it. He had gone his own way, never informing, never voicing complaints or personal moral judgments.

Bitterly he recalled how he had been passed over for promotion more times than he could remember. But whenever his superiors slipped too far and were discovered in scandal, the civilian commissioners always turned to Corona, a man they resented for his honesty but needed because he could be trusted.

There was a reason Cortina could never be bought in a land where corruption and kickbacks were commonplace. Every man, and woman too, has a price. Resentfully but patiently Cortina had waited until his price was met. If he was to sell out, he wouldn't come cheap. And the ten million dollars the Zolars offered for his cooperation, above and beyond the official approval for the treasure removal, was enough to ensure that his wife, four sons and their wives, and eight grandchildren would enjoy life in the new and rejuvenated Mexico spawned under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

At the same time, he knew the old days of looking the other way while holding out an open palm were dying out. The last two presidents of Mexico had waged all-out war against bureaucratic corruption. And the legalization and price regulation of certain drugs had dealt the drug dealers a blow that had cut their profits by 80 percent and their death-dealing volume by two-thirds.

Cortina stepped from the helicopter and was met by one of Amaru's men. He remembered arresting him for armed robbery in La Paz and helping obtain a conviction and a five-year prison term. If the freed criminal recognized Corona, there was no indication. He was ushered by the ex-convict into an aluminum house trailer that had been airlifted from Yuma to be used as an office for the treasure recovery project on top of the mountain.

He was surprised to see modern oil paintings by some of the Southwest's finest artists adorning the walls. Inside the richly paneled trailer, seated around an antique French Second Empire table, were Joseph Zolar, his two brothers, Fernando Matos from the National Affairs Department, and Colonel Roberto Campos, commander of northern Mexico's military forces on the Baja Peninsula.

Cortina gave a nod and a slight bow and was motioned to a chair. His eyes widened slightly as a very attractive serving lady brought him a glass of champagne and a plate of smoked sturgeon topped by a small mound of caviar. Zolar pointed to a cutaway illustration of the passageway leading to the interior caverns.

"Not an easy job, let me tell you. Bringing all that gold across a river deep below the floor of the desert, and then transporting it up a narrow tunnel to the top of the mountain."

"It goes well?" asked Cortina.

"Too early to throw confetti," replied Zolar. "The hardest part, dragging out Huascar's chain, is under way. Once it reaches the surface--" he paused to read the dial of his watch-- "in about half an hour from now, we will cut it into sections for easier loading and unloading during shipping. After it is safe inside our storage facilities in Morocco, it will be reconnected."

"Why Morocco?" inquired Fernando Matos. "Why not your warehouse in Galveston or your estate in Douglas, Arizona?"

"Protection. This is one collection of artifacts we don't want to risk storing in the United States. We have an arrangement with the military commander in Morocco who protects our shipments. The country also makes a convenient distribution center to ship the artifacts throughout Europe, South America, and the Far East."

"How do you plan to bring out the rest of the antiquities?" asked Campos.

"After they are floated across the underground river on rafts, they will be drawn up the passageway on a train of narrow platforms with ski runners."

"Then the winch I requisitioned has proven useful?"

"A godsend, Colonel," replied Oxley. "By six o'clock this evening your men should be loading the last of the golden artifacts onto the helicopters you so graciously provided.

Cortina held his glass of champagne but didn't taste it. "Is there any way of measuring the weight of the treasure?"

"Professor Henry Moore and his wife have given me an estimate of sixty tons."

"Good God," murmured Colonel Campos, an imposing figure of a man with a great mass of gray hair. "I had no idea it was so vast."

"Historical records failed to give a full inventory," said Oxley.

"And the value?" asked Corona.

"Our original estimate," Oxley lectured, "was two hundred and fifty million American dollars. But I think it's safe to say it's worth closer to three hundred million."

Oxley's amount was a total fabrication. The market price of the gold alone had risen close to seven hundred million dollars after the Moores' inventory. Incredibly, the added value as antiquities easily pushed the price well over one billion dollars on the underground market.

Zolar faced Corona and Campos, a broad smile on his face. "What this means, gentlemen, is that we can raise the ante considerably for the people of Baja California Norte."

"There will be more than enough for the public works your government administrators have envisioned," added Sarason.

Corona glanced sideways at Campos, and wondered how much the colonel was collecting to look the other way while the Zolars made off with the bulk of the treasure, including the massive golden chain. And Matos was an enigma. He couldn't figure out how the sniveling government official fit into the scheme of things. "In light of the increased estimated valuation, I believe a bonus should be forthcoming."

An opportunist, Campos instantly picked up on Corona's drift. "Yes, yes, I agree with my good friend Rafael. For me, it was not an easy matter to seal off the border."

It amused Cortina to hear Campos use his Christian name for the first time in the ten years they had occasionally met to discuss mutual police and military business. He knew how much it would irritate Campos if he did the same, so he said, "Roberto is quite right. Local businessmen and politicians are already complaining about the loss of tourist revenue and the halting of commercial traffic. Both of us will have to do some heavy explaining to our superiors."

"Won't they understand when you tell them it was to keep American federal agents from making an unauthorized border crossing to confiscate the treasure?" asked Oxley.

"I assure you the National Affairs Department will cooperate in every way to back your position," said Matos.

"Perhaps." Cortina shrugged. "Who can say for certain whether our government will buy the story or order Colonel Campos and me tried in court for overstepping our authority."

"Your bonus." Zolar put it to Cortina. "What did you have in mind?"

Without batting an eye, Cortina replied, "An additional ten million dollars in cash."

Campos was visibly stunned for an instant, but he jumped right in beside Corona. "Police Comandante Cortina speaks for both of us. Considering our risk and the added value of the treasure, ten million cash above our original agreement is not too much to ask."

Sarason entered into the negotiations. "You realize, of course, that the estimated value is nowhere near the price that we will eventually receive. Comandante Cortina knows that stolen jewels are rarely fenced for more than twenty percent of their true worth."

Zolar and Oxley maintained serious expressions, all the while knowing there were over a thousand collectors on their client list who were eagerly waiting to purchase portions of the golden artifacts at premium prices.

"Ten million," Cortina repeated stubbornly.

Sarason kept up the pretense of hard bargaining. "That's a lot of money," he protested.

"Protecting you from American and Mexican law enforcement agents is only half our involvement," Cortina reminded him. "Without Colonel Campos's heavy transport helicopters to haul the gold to your transfer site in the Altar Desert, you would end up with nothing."

"And without our involvement in the discovery, you would too," said Sarason.

Corona spread his hands indifferently. "I cannot deny that we need each other. But I strongly believe it would be in your best interests to be generous."

Sarason looked at his brothers. Zolar gave a barely perceptible nod. After a moment, Sarason turned to Corona and Campos and gestured in apparent defeat. "We know when we have a losing hand. Consider yourselves another ten million dollars richer."

The maximum load the winch could tow was five tons, so Huascar's chain was to be cut in the middle and dragged out in two pieces. The soldiers of the Mexican engineering battalion would then fashion a raft from boards requisitioned from the nearest lumber yard to ferry the main mass of the treasure across the subterranean river. Only the golden throne proved too heavy for the raft. Once Huascar's chain was pulled to the mountain peak, the winch cable was to be carried back down and attached to a harness wrapped around the throne. After sending a signal topside, it would be winched across the river bottom until it reached dry ground. From there the engineers, aided by Amaru's men, planned to muscle it onto a sled for the final journey from the heart of the mountain. Once out of the mountain, all of the artifacts would be loaded aboard vessels the Inca artisans who created the golden masterworks could never have visualized birds that flew without wings, known in modern times as helicopters.

On the island of treasure, Micki Moore busily catalogued and recorded descriptions of the pieces while Henry measured and photographed them. They had to work quickly. Amaru was driving the military engineers to remove everything in a hurry, an effort that reduced the small mountain of golden antiquities at an incredible rate. What had taken the Incas and Chachapoyas six days to cache inside the mountain, modern equipment was about to remove in ten hours.

She moved close to her husband and whispered, "I can't do this."

He looked at her.

Her eyes seemed to reflect the gold that gleamed under the bright lights brought in by the engineers. "I don't want any of the gold."

"Why not?" he asked her softly.

"I can't explain," she said. "I feel dirty enough as it is. I know you must have come to feel the same. We must do something to keep it out of Zolar's hands."

"Wasn't that our original intent, to terminate the Zolars and hijack the treasure after it was loaded aboard the aircraft in the Altar Desert?"

"That was before we saw how vast and magnificent it is. Let it go, Henry, we've bitten off more than we can chew."

Moore turned thoughtful. "This is one hell of time to get a conscience."

"Conscience has nothing to do with it. It's ridiculous to think we could unload tons of antiquities. We have to face facts. You and I don't have the facilities or the contacts to dispose of so large a hoard on the underground market."

"Selling Huascar's chain would not be all that difficult."

Micki looked up into his eyes for a long time. "You're a very good anthropologist, and I'm a very good archaeologist. We're also very good at jumping out of airplanes at night into strange countries and murdering people. Stealing priceless ancient art is not what we do best. Besides, we hate these people. I say we work together in keeping the treasure in one piece. Not scattered inside the vaults of a bunch of scavengers hungry for possessions no one else can own or ever view."

"I have to admit," he said wearily, "I've had my reservations too. What do you suggest we do?"

"The right thing," she replied huskily.

For the first time Moore noticed the compassion in her eyes. There was a beauty he had never seen before. She put her arms around him and gazed into his eyes. "We don't have to kill anymore. This time we won't have to crawl back under a rock when our operation is finished."

He took her head between his hands and kissed her. "I'm proud of you, old girl."

She pushed him back, her eyes widening as if she remembered something. "The hostages. I promised them we would rescue them if we could."

"Where are they?"

"If they're still alive, they should be on the surface."

Moore looked around the cavern and saw that Amaru was overseeing the removal of the mummies of the guardians from inside the crypt. The Zolars were leaving the caverns as bare as when the Incas found them. Nothing of value was to be left.

"We've got a detailed inventory," he said to Micki. "Let's be on our way."

The Moores hitched a ride on a sled stacked with golden animals being towed up to the staging area. When they came into daylight, they searched the summit, but Loren Smith and Rudi Gunn were nowhere to be found.

By then, it was too late for the Moores to reenter the mountain.

Loren shivered. Tattered clothing was no protection against the cool dampness of the cavern. Gunn put his arm around her to provide what body warmth he had to give. The tiny cell-like chamber that was their prison was little more than a wide crack in the limestone. There was no room to stand up, and whenever they tried to move about to find a comfortable position or to keep warm, the guard shoved his gun butt at them through the opening.

After the two sections of the golden chain had been brought through the passageway, Amaru forced them from the mountain crest down to the little cavity behind the guardian's crypt. Unknown to the Moores, Loren and Rudi had been imprisoned before the scientists made their way out of the treasure cavern.

"We would appreciate a drink of water," Loren told the guard.

He turned and looked at her blankly. He was an appalling figure, enormous, with an entirely repulsive face, thick lips, flat nose, and one eye. The empty socket he left exposed, giving him the brutal ugliness of Quasimodo.

This time when Loren shivered it wasn't from the cold. It was the fear that coursed throughout her half-naked body. She knew that to show audacity might invite pain, but she no longer cared. "Water, you drooling imbecile. Do you understand, agua?"

He gave her a cruel look and slowly vanished from their narrow line of vision. In a few minutes he returned and tossed a military canteen of water into the cave.

"I think you've made a friend," said Gunn.

"If he thinks he's getting a kiss on the first date," said Loren, twisting off the cap of the canteen, "he's got another think coming."

She offered Gunn a drink, but he shook his head. "Ladies first."

Loren drank sparingly and passed the canteen to Gunn. "I wonder what happened to the Moores?"

"They may not know we were moved from the summit down to this hellhole."

"I fear the Zolars intend to bury us alive in here," Loren said. The tears came to her eyes for the first time as her defenses began to crack. She had endured the beatings and the abuse, but now that it seemed she and Gunn were abandoned, the faint hope that had kept her going was all but extinguished.

"There is still Dirk," Gunn said gently.

She shook her head as if embarrassed at being seen wiping away the tears. "Please stop. Even if he were still alive, Dirk couldn't fight his way into this rotten mountain with a division of Marines and reach us in time."

"If I know our man, he wouldn't need a division of Marines."

"He's only human. He would be the last one to think of himself as a miracle worker."

"As long as we're still alive," said Gunn, "and there is a chance, that's all that matters."

"But for how long?" She shook her head sadly. "A few more minutes, a couple of hours? The truth is, we're already as good as dead."

When the first section of chain was dragged into daylight, everyone on the summit stood and admired it. The sheer mass of so much gold in one place took their breath away. Despite the dust and calcite drippings from centuries underground, the great mass of yellow gold gleamed blindingly under the noon sun.

In all the years the Zolars had been practicing the theft of antiquities, they had never seen such a masterwork of art so rich in splendor from the past. No treasured object known to history could match it. Fewer than four collectors throughout the world could have afforded the entire piece. The sight was doubly grand when the second section of chain was pulled from the passage opening and laid beside the first.

"Mother of heaven!" gasped Colonel Campos. "The links are as large as a man's wrist."

"Difficult to believe the Incas had mastered such highly technical skills in metallurgy," murmured Zolar.

Sarason knelt down and studied the links. "Their artistry and sophistication is phenomenal. Each link is perfect. There isn't a flaw anywhere."

Corona walked over to one of the end links and lifted it with considerable effort. "They must weigh fifty kilos each."

This is truly light-years ahead of any other discovery," said Oxley, trembling at the incredible sight.

Sarason tore his gaze away and gestured to Amaru. "Get it loaded on board the helicopter, quickly."

The evil-eyed killer nodded silently and began giving orders to his men and a squad of soldiers. Even Corona, Campos, and Matos pitched in. With help from a straining forklift and plenty of sweat, the two sections of chain were manhandled aboard two army helicopters and sent on their way to the desert airstrip.

Zolar watched as the two aircraft became tiny specks in the sky. "Nothing can stop us now," he said cheerfully to his brothers. "A few more hours and we're home free, with the largest treasure known to man."

To Sandecker, the audacious plan to come in through the back door of Cerro el Capirote in a wild attempt to save Loren Smith and Rudi Gunn was nothing less than suicidal. He knew the reasons Pitt had for risking his life, rescuing a loved one and a close friend from death, evening the score with a pair of murderers, and snatching a wondrous treasure from the hands of thieves. Those were grounds for justification of other men. Not Pitt. His motivation went much deeper. To challenge the unknown, laugh at the devil, and dare the odds. Those were his stimulants.

As for Giordino, Pitt's friend since childhood, Sandecker never doubted for an instant the rugged Italian would follow Pitt into a molten sea of lava.

Sandecker could have stopped them. But he hadn't built what was thought of by many as the finest, most productive, and budget efficient agency in the government without taking his fair share of risky gambles. His fondness for marching out of step with official Washington made him the object of respect as well as envy. The other directors of national bureaus would never consider hands-on control of a hazardous project in the field that might run the risk of censure from Congress and force resignation by presidential order. Sandecker's only regret was that this was one adventure he couldn't lead himself.

He paused after carrying a load of dive gear from the old Chevy down the tubular bore and looked at Peter Duncan, who sat beside the sinkhole, busily overlaying a transparency of a topographical map onto a hydrographic survey of known underground water systems.

The two charts were enlarged to the same scale, enabling Duncan to trace the approximate course of the subterranean river. Around him, the others were setting out the dive gear and float equipment. "As the crow flies," Duncan said to no one specifically, "the distance between Satan's Sinkhole and Cerro el Capirote works out to roughly thirty kilometers."

Sandecker looked down into the water of the sinkhole. "What quirk of nature formed the river channel?"

"About sixty million years ago," answered Duncan, "a shift in the earth caused a fault in the limestone, allowing water to seep in and carve out a series of connecting caverns."

The admiral turned to Pitt. "How long do you think it will take you to get there?"

"Running with a current of nine knots," said Pitt, "we should make the treasure cavern in three hours."

Duncan looked doubtful. "I've never seen a river that didn't meander. If I were you I'd add another two hours to my estimated time of arrival."

"The Wallowing Windbag will make up the time," Giordino said confidently as he stripped off his clothes.

"Only if you have clear sailing all the way. You're entering the unknown. There is no second-guessing the difficulties you might encounter. Submerged passages extending ten kilometers or more, cascades that fall the height of a ten-story building, or unnavigable rapids through rocks. White-water rafters have a saying-- if there is a rock, you'll strike it. If there is an eddy, you'll get caught in it."

"Anything else?" Giordino grinned, unshaken by Duncan's dire forecast. "Like vampires or gluttonous monsters with six jaws of barracuda teeth lurking in the dark to have us for lunch?"

"I'm only trying to prepare you for the unexpected," Duncan said. "The best theory I can offer that might give you a small sense of security is that I believe the main section of the river system flows through a fault in the earth. If I'm right, the channel will travel in an erratic path but with a reasonably level depth."

Pitt patted him on the shoulder. "We understand and we're grateful. But at this stage, all Al and I can do is hope for the best, expect the worst, and settle for anything in between."

"When you swam out of the sinkhole's feeder stream into the river," Sandecker asked Duncan, "was there an air pocket?"

"Yes, the rock ceiling rose a good ten meters above the surface of the river."

"How far did it extend?"

"We were hanging onto the fixed guideline for dear life against the current and only got a brief look. A quick sweep of my light failed to reveal the end of the gallery."

"With luck, they'll have an air passage the entire trip."

"A lot of luck," said Duncan skeptically, his eyes still drawn to the chart overlays. "As underground rivers go, this one is enormous. In sheer length, it must be the longest unexplored subterranean water course through a field of karst."

Giordino hesitated in strapping on a small console containing pressure gauges, a compass, and a depth meter to his arm. "What do you mean by karst?"

"Karst is the term for a limestone belt that is penetrated by a system of streams, passages, and caverns."

"It makes one wonder how many other unknown rivers are flowing under the earth," said Pitt.

"Leigh Hunt and his river canyon of gold, another source of jokes by California and Nevada state hydrologists, now bear heavy investigation," admitted Duncan. "Because of what you discovered here, I'll guarantee that closed minds will take a second look."

"Maybe I can do my bit for the cause," said Pitt, holding up a small waterproof computer before strapping it to his forearm. "I'll try to program a survey, and plot data on the river's course as we go."

"I'll be grateful for all the scientific data you can bring back," acknowledged Duncan. "Finding a golden treasure under Cerro el Capirote may fire the imagination, but in reality it's incidental to the discovery of a water source that can turn millions of acres of desert into productive farm and ranch land."

"Perhaps the gold can fund the pumping systems and pipelines for such a project," said Pitt.

"Certainly a dream to consider," added Sandecker.

Giordino held up an underwater camera. "I'll bring back some pictures for you."

"Thank you," said Duncan gratefully. "I'd also appreciate another favor."

Pitt smiled. "Name it."

He handed Pitt a plastic packet in the shape of a basketball but half the size. "A dye tracer called Fluorescein Yellow with Optical Brightener. I'll buy you the best Mexican dinner in the Southwest if you'll throw it into the river when you reach the treasure chamber. That's all. As it floats along the river the container will automatically release the dye over regular intervals."

"You want to record where the river outlet emerges into the Gulf."

Duncan nodded. "That will give us an important hydrologic link."

He was also going to ask if Pitt and Giordino might take water samples, but thought better of it. He had already pushed them as far as he dared. If they were successful in navigating the river as far as the hollow interior of Cerro el Capirote, then he and his fellow scientists could mount subsequent scientific expeditions based on the data acquired by Pitt and Giordino.

Over the next ten minutes, Pitt and Giordino geared up and went over the plans for their journey. They had made countless dives together under a hundred different water and weather conditions, but none of this distance through the depths of the earth. Like doctors discussing a delicate brain operation, no detail was left to chance. Their survival depended on it.

Communication signals were agreed upon, buddy breathing strategies in case of air loss, the drill for inflating and deflating the Wallowing Windbag, who was in control of what equipment-- all procedures were deliberated and jointly approved.

"I see you're not wearing a pressurized dry suit," observed Sandecker as Pitt pulled on his wet suit.

"The water temperature is a few degrees on the cool side, but warm enough so we don't have to worry about hypothermia. A wet suit gives us more freedom of movement than a dry suit that is pressurized by air tanks. This will prove a dire necessity if we find ourselves struggling in the water to right the Wallowing Windbag after it is flipped over by raging rapids."

Instead of the standard backpack, Pitt attached his air tanks to a harness around his hips for easier access through narrow passages. He was also festooned with breathing regulators, air lines leading to dual valve manifolds, pressure gauges, and a small backup bottle filled with pure oxygen for decompression. Then came weight belts and buoyancy compensators.

"No mixed gas?" queried Sandecker.

"We'll breathe air," Pitt replied as he checked his regulators.

"What about the danger of nitrogen narcosis?"

"Once we're clear of the bottom of the sinkhole and the lower part of the feeder stream before it upslopes to the river, we'll avoid any further deep diving like the plague."

"Just see that you stay well above the threshold," Sandecker warned him, "and don't go below thirty meters. And once you're afloat keep a sharp eye for submerged boulders."

Those were the words the admiral spoke. What he didn't say was, "If something goes wrong and you need immediate help, you might as well be on the third ring of Saturn." In other words, there could be no rescue or evacuation.

Pitt and Giordino made a final predive check of each other's equipment by the side of the pool and tested their ` quick-release buckles and snaps to ensure their smooth removal in an emergency. Instead of divers' hoods, they strapped construction workers' hardhats to their heads with dual-sealed miners' lamps on the front. Then they poised on the edge of the sinkhole and slipped into the water.

Sandecker and Duncan hoisted a long, pressure-sealed aluminum canister and struggled to lower one end into the sinkhole. The canister, measuring one meter in width by four in length, was articulated in the middle for easier maneuvering through tight spaces. Heavy and cumbersome on land from the lead ballast required to give it neutral buoyancy, it was easily moved by a diver underwater.

Giordino bit on his mouthpiece, adjusted his mask, and took hold of a handgrip on the forward end of the canister. He threw a final wave as he and the canister slowly sank together below the water surface. Pitt looked up from the water and shook hands with Duncan.

"Whatever you do," Duncan warned him, "mind you don't let the current sweep you past the treasure chamber. From that position to where the river emerges into the Gulf has to be over a hundred kilometers."

"Don't worry, we won't spend any more time down there than we have to."

"May God dive with you," said Duncan.

"All heavenly company will be warmly welcomed," said Pitt sincerely. Then he gripped Sandecker's hand. "Keep a tequila on ice for me, Admiral."

"I wish there was another way into the mountain."

Pitt shook his head. "It can only be done with a diveraft operation."

"Bring Loren and Rudi back," replied Sandecker, fighting off a surge of emotion.

"You'll see them soon," Pitt promised.

And then he was gone.

The voice of his radio operator roused Captain Juan Diego from his reverie, and he turned from gazing out his command tent at the cone-shaped mountain. There was an indescribable ugliness about Cerro el Capirote and the bleak desert that surrounded it, he thought. This was a wasteland compared to the beauty of his native state of Durango.

"Yes, what is it, Sergeant?"

The radio operator had his back to him and Diego couldn't see the puzzled look on the soldier's face. "I called the security posts for their hourly status reports and received no response from Posts Four and Six."

Diego sighed. He didn't need unexpected predicaments. Colonel Campos had commanded him to set up a security perimeter around the mountain and he had followed orders. No reason was given, none was asked. Consumed with curiosity, Diego could only watch the helicopters arrive and depart and wonder what was going on up there.

"Contact Corporal Francisco at Post Five and have him send a man to check Four and Six." Diego sat down at his field desk and duly noted the lack of response in his daily report as a probable breakdown in communications equipment. The possibility there was a real problem never entered his mind.

"I can't raise Francisco at Post Five either," the radioman informed him.

Diego finally turned. "Are you certain your equipment is working properly?"

"Yes, Sir. The transmitter is sending and receiving perfectly."

"Try Post One."

The radioman adjusted his headphones and signaled the post. A few moments later, he turned and shrugged.

"I'm sorry, Captain, Post One is silent too."

"I'll see to this myself," Diego said irritably. He picked up a portable radio and headed from the tent toward his command vehicle. Suddenly, he stopped in his tracks and stared dumbly.

The army command vehicle was sitting with the left front end jacked up, the wheel and the spare tire both nowhere to be seen. "What in hell is going on?" he muttered to himself. Is this some sort of prank, he wondered, or could Colonel Campos be testing him?

He spun around on his heel and started for the tent but took only two steps. As if conjured up out of nothingness by a spell, three men blocked his way. All held rifles pointed at his chest. The first question that ran through his mind was why were Indians, dressed as if they were on a cattle drive, sabotaging his equipment?

"This is a military zone," he blurted. "You are not permitted here."

"Do as you're told, soldier boy," said Billy Yuma, "and none of your men will get hurt."

Diego suddenly guessed what had happened to his security posts. And yet he was confused. There was no way a few Indians could capture forty trained soldiers without firing a shot. He addressed his words to Yuma, whom he took to be the leader.

"Drop your weapons before my men arrive or you will be placed under military arrest."

"I'm sorry to inform you, soldier boy," Yuma said, taking delight in intimidating the officer in his neatly pressed field uniform and brightly shined combat boots, "but your entire force has been disarmed and is now under guard."

"Impossible!" snapped Diego haughtily. "No mob of sand rats can stand up against trained troops."

Yuma shrugged indifferently and turned to one of the men beside him. "Fix the radio inside the tent so it won't work."

"You're crazy. You can't destroy government property."

"You have trespassed on our land," said Yuma in a low voice. "You have no authority here."

"I order you to put those guns down," commanded Diego, reaching for his sidearm.

Yuma stepped forward, his weathered face expressionless, and rammed the muzzle of his old Winchester rifle deep into Captain Diego's stomach. "Do not resist us. If I pull the trigger, your body will silence the gunfire to those on the mountain."

The sudden, jolting pain convinced Diego these men were not playing games. They knew the desert and could move through the terrain like ghosts. His orders were to prevent possible encroachment by wandering hunters or prospectors. Nothing was mentioned about an armed force of local Indians who lay in ambush. Slowly, he handed over his automatic pistol to one of Yuma's men, who stuffed the barrel down the waist of his denim pants.

"Your radio too, please."

Diego reluctantly passed over the radio. "Why are you doing this?" he asked. "Don't you know you are breaking the law?"

"If you soldier boys are working with the men who are defiling our sacred mountain, it is you who are breaking the law, our law. Now, no more talk. You will come with us."

In silence, Captain Diego and his radioman were escorted half a kilometer (a third of a mile) to a large overhanging rock protruding from the mountain. There, out of sight of anyone on the peak, Diego found his entire company of men sitting nervously in a tight group while several Indians covered them with their own weapons.

They scrambled to their feet and came to attention, their faces reflecting relief at seeing their commanding officer. Two lieutenants and a sergeant came up and saluted.

"Is there no one who escaped?" asked Diego.

One of the lieutenants shook his head. "No, sir. They were on us before we could resist."

Diego looked around at the Indians guarding his men. Including Yuma, he counted only sixteen. "Is this all of you?" he asked unbelievingly.

Yuma nodded. "We did not need more."

"What are you going to do with us?"

"Nothing, soldier boy. My neighbors and I have been careful not to harm anyone. You and your men will enjoy a nice siesta for a few hours, and then you'll be free to leave our land."

"And if we attempt to escape?"

Yuma shrugged indifferently. "Then you will be shot. Something you should think about, since my people can hit a running rabbit at fifty meters."

Yuma had said all he had to say. He turned his back on Captain Diego and began climbing an almost unrecognizable trail between a fissure on the south wall of the mountain. No words were spoken between the Montolos. As if on silent command, ten men followed Billy Yuma while five remained behind to guard the prisoners.

The ascent went faster than the last time. He profited from his mistakes and ignored the wrong turns he had taken that curved into blind chutes. He remembered the good handholds and avoided the ones that were badly eroded. But it was still tough going on a trail no self-respecting pack mule would be caught dead on.

He would have preferred more men to support his assault, but the ten men struggling behind him were the only ones who were not afraid of the mountain. Or that was what they claimed. Yuma was not blind to the apprehension in their eyes.

After he reached a flat ledge, he stopped to catch his breath. His heart was beginning to pound, but his body was tensed with the nervous energy of a racehorse ready to burst from the gate. He pulled an old pocket watch from his pants pocket and checked the time. He nodded to himself in satisfaction and held the watch face for the others to see. They were twenty minutes ahead of schedule.

High above, on the mountain's summit, the helicopters hovered like bees around a hive. They were loaded with I as much of the treasure as they could lift before struggling into the sky and setting a course for the airstrip in the Altar Desert.

Colonel Campos's officers and men were working so fast, and were so awed by the golden hoard, none thought to check the security forces stationed around the base of the mountain. The radio operator on the peak was too busy coordinating the comings and goings of the helicopters to ask for a report from Captain Diego. No one took the time to look over the edge at the deserted encampment below. Nor did they notice the small band of men who were slowly climbing ever closer to the mountaintop.

Police Comandante Cortina was not a man who missed much. As his police helicopter rose from Cerro el Capirote for the return trip to his headquarters, he stared down at the stone beast and caught something that was missed by all the others. A pragmatic man, he closed his eyes and put it off as a trick of sunlight and shadows, or perhaps the angle of his view. But when he refocused his eyes on the ancient sculpture, he could have sworn the vicious expression had altered. The menacing look was gone.

To Cortina, just before it slipped out of view of his window, the fang-filled jaws on the guardian of the dead were frozen in a smile.

Pitt felt as though he were free-falling down a mammoth soda straw filled with cobalt blue mist. The sides of the vertical shaft of the sinkhole were round and smooth, almost as if they had been polished. If he hadn't been able to see his diving partner through the transparent water a short distance below, the shaft would have seemed bottomless. He cleared his ears as he descended, finning easily until he caught up with Giordino, who was towing their dry transport container past the elbow bend at the bottom of the shaft. Pitt helped by pushing his end through, and then followed in its wake.

He glanced at his depth-gauge needle. It was holding steady just shy of the 60-meter mark (197 feet). From here on, as the feeder stream sloped up toward the river, the water pressure would decrease, relieving any fear of depth blackout.

This was nothing like the dive into the sacrificial pool on the jungled slopes of the Andes. There, he had used a strong safety line with communications equipment. And except for the brief foray into the side cavern to rescue Shannon and Miles, he was never out of sight of the surface. This trip, they'd be entering an underworld of perpetual blackness no man or animal had ever seen.

As they moved their bulky canister through the twists and turns of the feeder stream leading to the river, Pitt recalled that cave diving is one of the most dangerous sports in the world. There was the Stygian blackness, the claustrophobic sensation of knowing you're far beneath the solid rock, the maddening silence, and the constant threat of disorientation if silt is stirred into impenetrable clouds. All this could lead to panic, which had killed scores of divers who were trained and equipped to deal with the perils, and made cave diving a morbid fascination that could not be learned from a book.

What was it his instructor from the National Speleological Society had told him before his first dive into a saltwater cave in the Bahamas? "Anyone can die at any time on a cave dive." In that peculiar way a particular fact learned in youth can stick in your mind forever, Pitt remembered that during the year 1974, twenty-six divers had lost their lives in Florida's underwater caves alone, and that the world total of deaths must have been three times that figure.

Pitt had never suffered from claustrophobia and fear seldom distracted him, but under hazardous conditions he experienced just enough uneasiness to sharpen his senses to unexpected dangers.

As it was, he didn't look forward to diving without a fixed guide or safety line. He well knew this operation could quickly turn into an exercise in self-destruction, especially once they became uncontrollably caught up in the river's current. Then there would be no escape until they reached the treasure chamber.

The horizontal fissure leading to the river expanded and tapered in a series of hourglass shapes. At 100 meters (328 feet) from the sinkhole they lost 90 percent of the outside light. They switched on the lamps attached to their hardhats. Another quick glance at his depth gauge told Pitt they had slowly ascended to within 20 meters (66 feet) of the water surface.

Giordino ceased his forward movement, turned, and waved with one hand. They had reached the outlet into the river system. Pitt answered with the hand signal for OK. Then he slipped his arm through the strap attached to the transport canister so it wouldn't be torn from him by unforeseen turbulence.

Giordino kicked his fins powerfully and angled upstream in a vigorous effort to pull the canister broadside into the river as far as possible before the main flow of the current swung him downstream before Pitt could exit the feeder stream. His timing was near perfect. Just as he lost his momentum and the current caught him in its grip, thrusting him around, Pitt and his end of the canister popped out of the side gallery.

As previously planned, they calmly inflated their buoyancy compensators, released the lead weights on the canister to make it buoyant, and calmly drifted upward while being carried downriver. After traveling close to 50 meters (164 feet), they broke surface, their lights revealing a large open gallery. The ceiling was covered by a strange black rock that was not limestone. Only when Pitt steadied his light did he recognize it as volcanic. Fortunately, the river's flow was smooth and uninterrupted by rocks, but the walls of the passage rose steeply out of the water, offering them no place to land.

He spit out his regulator mouthpiece and called to Giordino. "Be ready to cut to the side when you see an open spot on the bank."

"Will do," Giordino said over his shoulder.

They quickly passed from the volcanic intrusion back into limestone that was covered by an odd gray coating that absorbed their light beams and gave the impression the batteries were giving out on their lamps. A steady, thunderous sound grew and echoed through the passage. Their worst fears-- being swept through unnavigable rapids or going over a waterfall before making a landingsuddenly loomed in the darkness ahead.

"Keep a tight grip," Giordino shouted. "It looks like we're in for a tumble."

Pitt angled his head downward so the lights on his hardhat pointed directly to the front. It was a wasted motion. The passage was soon filled with a mist that rose out of the water like steam. Pitt had a sudden vision of going over Niagara Falls without a barrel. The roar was deafening now, magnified by the acoustics of the rocky cavern. And then Giordino passed into the mist and vanished.

Pitt could only hold on to the canister and watch with strangely paralyzed fascination as he was enveloped by the spray. He braced himself for an endless fall. But the endless fall never came. The thunder came not from the river plunging downward, but from a furious torrent that crashed down from above.

He was pummeled by a surging deluge that burst in a great plume from the limestone roof of the cavern. The huge torrent of water barreled down a tributary that fed into the subterranean river from another source. Pitt was baffled by the sight of so much water rushing under an and and thirsty desert no farther away than the distance a good outfielder could throw a baseball. He decided that it must feed into the river by great pressure from a system of underground aquifers.

Once through the curtain of mist, he could see the walls had spread and the roof sloped upward into a chamber of vast size and proportion. It was a bizarrely decorated cavern filled with grotesquely shaped helictites, a family of stalactites that ignores gravity and grows in eccentric directions. Mineral deposits had also formed beautifully sculpted mushrooms over a meter tall and delicate gypsum flowers with graceful plumes. The spectacular formations would have been described by veteran spelunkers as a showcase grotto.

Pitt couldn't but wonder how many other subterranean worlds sprawled through the earth in eternal darkness, waiting to be discovered and explored. It was easy to let the mind run amok and imagine a long-dead and lost race who had lived down here and carved the magnificent calcite sculptures.

Not Giordino. The beauty was lost on him. He turned, gazed back at Pitt with a big I'm-glad-to-be-alive smile and said, "Looks like a hangout for the Phantom of the Opera."

"I doubt if we'll find Lon Chaney playing the pipe organ down here."

"We have a landing thirty meters ahead to the left," Giordino said, his spirits lifting considerably.

"Right. Start your turn into shallow water and swim like hell to get out of the main current."

Giordino needed no urging. He cut his angle sharply, pulling the canister behind him and kicking his fins furiously. Pitt released his grip on the big aluminum tube, swam strongly alongside until he was at its midpoint, and then, using his body as a drag, he heaved it after Giordino.

The approach worked as Pitt had hoped. Giordino broke free of the current and swam into calmer water. When his fins touched the bottom, he climbed ashore, dragging the canister with him.

Now unhampered, Pitt easily stroked into the shallows, landing ten meters below Giordino. He crawled out of the water, sat down, removed his fins and goggles, and carefully walked back upstream across the smoothly textured rocks as he removed his air tanks.

Giordino did the same before he began dismantling the canister. He looked up at Pitt with a look of profound accomplishment. "Nice place you've got here."

"Sorry for the mess," muttered Pitt, "but the seven dwarfs are on a break."

"Does it feel as good to you as it does to me that we've come this far?"

"I'm not sad to be alive, if that's what you mean."

"How far have we come?"

Pitt tapped in a command on the computer strapped to his arm. "According to my faithful wonder of technology, we have traveled two kilometers through damnation and dropped another two meters toward hell."

"Twenty-eight to go."

"Yes," Pitt said, smiling like a magician about to bedazzle an audience. "But from here on, we go in style."

Five minutes later the eight air chambers of the Wallowing Windbag were filled and the hull fully inflated, deployed, and ready to do battle with the river. Known as a water rescue response vehicle, the ungainly Hovercraft could ride on a cushion of air effortlessly over boiling rapids, quicksand, thin ice, and polluted quagmires. Vehicles in use by police and fire departments around the country had saved countless victims from death by drowning. Now this one was going on an endurance trial its builders never conceived.

Three meters (10 feet) in length and 1.5 meters (5 feet) wide, the compact craft mounted a four-cycle, 50-horsepower engine that could propel her over a flat surface at 64 kilometers (40 miles) an hour.

"Our engineers did a fine job of modifying the height," said Giordino.

"Adopting a horizontal engine and fan was a stroke of genius," Pitt agreed.

Amazing how much equipment they crammed inside the canister."

Before they cast off, they stowed and tied down ten reserve air tanks, extra air bottles to reinflate the Hovercraft, a battery of lights including two aircraft landing lights built into waterproof housings, spare batteries, first aid equipment, and three additional breathing regulators.

From a watertight container Pitt retrieved his battered, old .45 Colt automatic and two ammo clips. He smiled as he also found a thermos of coffee and four bologna sandwiches. Admiral Sandecker never forgot the details that make for a successful operation. Pitt put the thermos and sandwiches back in the container. There was no time for a picnic. They had to push on if they were to reach the treasure chamber before it was too late to save Loren and Rudi. He inserted the gun and extra ammo clips into a plastic bag and sealed the opening. Then he unzipped the front of his wet suit and slipped the bag inside next to his stomach.

He stared for a moment at the black collapsible Hovercraft. "Oh, Circe, who will guide us on this journey," he quoted. "To Hades no man ever went in a black ship."

Giordino looked up from coupling a pair of steering oars to their locks. "Where did you hear that?"

"The Odyssey by Homer."

"Verily among the Trojans too there be men that dive," Giordino recited glibly. "The Iliad. I can quote Homer too."

"You never cease to amaze me."

"It's nothing really."

Pitt climbed aboard. "Gear stashed?"

"All buttoned down."

"Ready to shove off?"

"Start her up."

Pitt crouched in the stern just ahead of the engine fan. He engaged the starter and the air-cooled engine sputtered to life. The small engine was well muffled and the exhaust sounded only as a muted throb.

Giordino took his position in the bow of the craft and turned on one of the landing lights, illuminating the cavern as bright as daylight. He looked back at Pitt and laughed. "I hope no one fines us for polluting a virgin environment."

Pitt laughed too. "A losing proposition for the local sheriff. I forgot my wallet."

The Hovercraft moved off the shoreline, suspended on its self-produced 20-centimeter (8-inch) cushion of air into the mainstream of the river. Pitt held the vertical grips of the control bar in each hand and easily steered an arrow-straight course over the flowing current.

It seemed strange to be skimming over the water surface without a sensation of contact. From the bow, Giordino could look down into the remarkably transparent water that had turned from the cobalt blue of the sinkhole to a deep aqua green and see startled albino salamanders and small schools of blind cave fish darting amid the spherical boulders that carpeted the river bottom like fallen ornaments. He kept busy reporting the river conditions ahead and snapping photos as Pitt maneuvered and recorded data on his computer for Peter Duncan.

Even with their rapid motion through the large corridors, their sweat and the extreme humidity combined to form a halo like mist around their heads. They ignored the phenomenon and the darkness behind them, never looking back as they continued deeper into the river-carved canyon.

For the first 8 kilometers (5 miles) it was clear sailing and they made good time. They skimmed over bottomless pools and past forbidding galleries that extended deep into the walls of the caverns. The ceilings in the string of river chambers varied from a high of 30 meters (98 feet) to barely enough room to squeeze the Hovercraft through. They bounced over several small, shallow cascades without difficulty and entered a narrow channel where it took all their concentration to avoid the everpresent rocks. Then they traveled through one enormous gallery that stretched almost 3 kilometers (slightly under 2 miles) and was filled with stunning crystals that glinted and sparkled beneath the aircraft light.

On two different occasions, the passage became flooded when the ceiling merged with the water surface. Then they went through the routine of deflating the Wallowing Windbag until it achieved neutral buoyancy, returned to breathing from their air tanks, and drifted with the current through the sunken passage dragging the flattened Hovercraft and its equipment behind them until they emerged into an open cavern and reinflated it again. There were no complaints over the additional effort. Neither man expected a smooth cruise down a placid river.

To relieve the stress they began giving nonsensical names to the galleries and prominent features. The Fun House, the Wax Museum, Giordino's Gymnasium. A small spout from a cavern wall was labeled Postnasal Drip. The river itself they called the Old Sot.

After traveling through a second submerged passage and reinflating their boat, Pitt observed that the current's pace had quickened by two knots and the river gradient began dropping at a faster rate. Like leaves through a gutter drain, they rushed into the eternal land of gloom, never knowing what dangers lurked around the next bend.

The rapids increased frighteningly as the Hovercraft was suddenly swept into a raging cataract. The emerald water turned a boiling white as it cascaded through a passage strewn with boulders. Now the Wallowing Windbag was rearing up like a rodeo bronco as it surged between the rocks and plunged sickeningly into the next trough. Every time Pitt told himself the rapids couldn't possibly get more violent, the next stretch of river slammed the Hovercraft into a seething frenzy that buried it completely on more than one occasion. But the faithful little craft always shook off the froth and fought back to the surface.

Pitt struggled like a madman to keep the boat on a straight course. If they swung halfway around broadside to the tumult, all chances for survival would have been lost. Giordino grabbed the emergency oars and put his back into keeping the boat steady. They swept around a sharp curve in the river over massive rocks, some partly submerged and kicking up great waves shaped like rooster tails, others rising above the turbulence like menacing monoliths. Several boulders were skinned by the little vessel. Then one rose out of the trough that seemed certain to crush the boat and its occupants. But the outer hull sideswiped the unyielding stone without a puncture and was carried past.

Their ordeals never ceased. They were caught in a swirling eddy like a cork being sucked down a drain. Pitt braced his back against an air-filled support cell to stay upright and pushed the throttle to its stop. The howl of the racing engine was lost in the roar of the rapids. All his will and concentration were focused on keeping the Hovercraft from twisting broadside from the force of the speeding current as Giordino assisted by pulling mightily on the oars.

Lost when Giordino took up the oars, the landing lights had fallen overboard into the froth. Now the only light came from the lamps on their hardhats. It seemed a lifetime had passed before they finally broke clear of the whirlpool and were hurled back into the rapids.

Pitt eased back on the throttle and relaxed his hands on the grips of the control bar. There was no point in fighting the river now. The Wallowing Windbag would go where the surging water threw it.

Giordino peered into the black unknown ahead, hoping to see calmer water. What he saw was a fork in the river that divided the mainstream into two different galleries. He shouted above the tumult, "We're coming to a junction!"

"Can you tell which is the main conduit?" Pitt yelled back.

"The one on the left looks the largest!"

"Okay, pull to port!"

The Hovercraft came terrifyingly close to being smashed against the great mass of rock that split the river and only missed turning turtle by a hair as it was overwhelmed by a giant backwash. The little vessel dug into the turbulence and lurched forward sickeningly, burying its bow under a wall of water. Somehow it regained a level keel before being thrown forward by the relentless current.

For an instant Pitt thought he'd lost Giordino, but then the burly little man rose out of the deep pool filling the inside of the boat and shook his head to clear the dizziness brought on by being spun around like a ball in a roulette wheel. Incredibly, he cracked a smile and pointed to his ears.

Pitt understood. The continuous roar of the rapids seemed to be slackening. The Hovercraft responded to his control again, but sluggishly, because it was half-full of water. The excess weight was making it impossible to maintain an air-cushion. He increased the throttle and yelled to Giordino.

"Start bailing!"

The boat designers had thought of everything. Giordino inserted a lever into a small pump and began shoving it back and forth, causing a gush of water to shoot through a pipe over the side.

Pitt leaned over and studied the depths under his headlamps. The channel seemed more constricted, and although the rocks were no longer churning up the water, the river seemed to be moving at a horrifying speed. Suddenly, he noticed that Giordino had stopped bailing and was listening with an apocalyptic look on his face. And then Pitt heard it too.

A deep rumble boomed from the black void downriver.

Giordino stared at him. "I think we just bought the farm!" he shouted.

The vision of going over Niagara Falls returned. This was no spout from above they were approaching. The sound that reverberated through the cavern was that of an enormous volume of water rushing over an immense cascade.

"Hit the inflator on your buoyancy compensator!" Pitt roared above the chaos.

The water was sweeping them along at a good twenty knots and appeared to be funneling into a concentrated surge. A million liters of water sucked them toward the unseen precipice. They rounded the next bend and sailed into a maelstrom of mist. The thunderous rumble became deafening.

There was no fear, no sense of helplessness, no feeling of despair. All Pitt felt was a strange numbness as if all power of intelligent thought had abruptly evaporated. It seemed to him that he was entering a nightmare where nothing had any shape or form. His final moment of clarity came when the Wallowing Windbag hung suspended for a moment before soaring into the mist.

With no point of reference, there was no sensation of falling, rather, it seemed as if they were flying through a cloud. Then his hold on the control bar was lost and he was hurled out of the Hovercraft. He thought he heard Giordino shout something, but the voice was lost in the roar of the falls. The drop through the vortex seemed to take forever. And then came the impact. He struck a deep pool at the base of the falls like a meteor. The air was driven from his lungs and he thought at first that he was smashed to bloody pulp on rocks, but then he felt the comforting squeeze of water all around him.

Instinctively holding his breath, he fought to reach the surface. Aided by his inflated buoyancy compensator, he quickly broke clear and was immediately swept away by the torrent. Rocks reached out for him like shrouded predators of the underworld. He was flung down a spill of rapids, colliding, he'd have sworn, with every boulder that protruded from the river. The contact rasped and shredded his wet suit, stripping skin from his legs and outspread arms. He suffered a blow to his chest and then his head struck something hard and ungiving. But for the protection of the hardhat that absorbed 80 percent of the blow, he'd have cracked his skull open.

Incredibly, his buoyancy compensator stayed inflated and he floated half-unconscious through a short spill of rapids. One of the lights on his helmet was smashed by the impact and the other one seemed to cast an indistinct red beam. Gratefully, he felt loose stone beneath his feet and saw he was being spun toward shallows leading to a small open space along the shoreline. He swam until his knees scraped the coarse gravel, struggling to loosen the grip of the murderous current. He extended his hands to pull himself over the slippery stones onto the dry shelf. A groan of pain escaped his lips as one of his wrists exploded in agony. At some point after going over the falls, he had broken something there. His wrist was not all that was broken. He'd also cracked two or more ribs on his left side.

The rumbling thunder of the falls sounded far in the distance. Slowly his mind came back on track and he wondered how far he'd been swept by the ungodly torrent. Then, as more of the cobwebs cleared, he remembered Giordino. In desperation he shouted Al's name, his voice echoing through the air chamber, hoping but never really expecting to hear a reply.

"Over here."

The answer didn't come much louder than a whisper, but Pitt heard it as if it came out of a loudspeaker. He rose unsteadily to his feet, trying to get a fix. "Say again."

"I'm only six meters upstream of you," said Giordino. "Can't you see me?"

A red haze seemed to block Pitt's field of vision. He rubbed his eyes and found he could focus them again. He also realized the red haze that had been clouding his sight came from blood that was spilling from a gash in his forehead. Now he could clearly discern Giordino lying on his back a short distance away, half out of the water.

He staggered over to his friend, clutching the left side of his chest in a vain attempt to contain the pain. He knelt stiffly beside Giordino. "Am I ever glad to see you. I thought you and the Windbag had sailed off without me."

"The remains of our trusty boat were swept downstream."

"Are you badly injured?" Pitt asked.

Giordino smiled gamely, held up his hands and wiggled his fingers. "At least I can still play Carnegie Hall."

"Play what? You can't even carry a tune." Then Pitt's eyes filled with concern. "Is it your back?"

Giordino weakly shook his head. "I stayed with the Windbag and my feet were caught in the lines holding the equipment when she struck bottom. Then she went one way, and I went the other. I think both legs are broken below the knees." He explained his injuries as calmly as if he were describing a pair of flat tires.

Pitt gently felt Giordino's calves as his friend clenched his fists. "Lucky you. Simple breaks, no compound fractures."

Giordino stared up at Pitt. "You look like you went through the spin cycle in a washing machine."

"A few scrapes and bruises," Pitt lied.

"Then why are you talking through clenched teeth?"

Pitt didn't answer. He tried to call up a program on the computer on his arm, but it had been knocked against a rock and was broken. He unbuckled the straps and threw it in the river. "So much for Duncan's data."

"I lost the camera too."

"Tough break. Nobody will be coming this way again soon, certainly not over those falls."

"Any idea how far to the treasure cavern?" asked Giordino.

"A rough guess? Maybe two kilometers."

Giordino looked at him. "You'll have to go it alone."

"You're talking crazy."

"I'll only be a burden." He was no longer smiling. "Forget about me. Get to the treasure cavern."

"I can't leave you here."

"Busted bones or not, I can still float. I'll follow you later."

"Take care when you get there," said Pitt grimly. "You may drift, but you can't escape the current. Mind you stay close to shore out of the mainstream or you'll be swept beyond recovery."

"No big deal if I am. Our air tanks went with the Wallowing Windbag. If we meet a flooded gallery between here and the treasure chamber longer than we can hold our breath, we'll drown anyway."

"You're supposed to look on the bright side."

Giordino removed a spare flashlight from a belt around one thigh. "You'll need this. Your headlamp looks like it lost a fight with a rock. Come to think of it, your face is a mess too. You're bleeding all over the shredded remains of your nice clean wet suit.'

"Another dip in the river will fix that," said Pitt, attaching the flashlight around the forearm above his broken left wrist where the computer used to be. He dropped his weight belt. "I won't be needing this any longer."

"Aren't you taking your air tank?"

"I don't want to be hindered any more than I have to."

"What if you come to a flooded chamber?"

"I'll have to free dive through as far as I can on my lungs."

"One last favor," said Giordino, holding up the empty harness straps that once supported his air tanks. "Wrap my legs together to keep them from flopping around."

Pitt cinched the straps as tight as he dared, conscious of his broken wrist and the need to be gentle. Except for a sharp intake of breath, Giordino uttered no sound. "Rest up for at least an hour before you follow," Pitt ordered.

"Just get a move on and do what you can to save Loren and Rudi. I'll be along as soon as I'm able."

"I'll keep a watch for you."

"Better find a big net."

Pitt gave Giordino's arm a farewell grip. Then he waded into the river until the current swept him off his feet and carried him into the next cavern.

Giordino watched until Pitt's light vanished around the next bend in the canyon and was lost in the darkness. Two kilometers (1.2 miles), he mused. He hoped to God the final leg of the journey was in air-filled chambers.

Zolar drew a long, relieved breath. Things had gone well, better than he'd expected. The project was winding down. The trailer used for the operations office, the forklift, and the winch had been airlifted away along with most of Colonel Campos's men. Only a small squad of army engineers remained behind to load the final lot onto the army transport helicopter that was parked beside the stolen NUMA craft.

Zolar looked down at the remaining pieces of the golden treasure, which stood in a neat row. He studied the brilliantly gleaming antiquities with an eye toward their ultimate sale price. The artistry and magnificence of the metalwork of the twenty-eight golden statues of Inca warriors was indescribable. They each stood one meter high and provided a rare glimpse into the creative mastery of Inca artisans.

"A few more and you'd have yourself a chess set," said Oxley, admiring the golden display.

"A pity I won't keep them," replied Zolar sadly. "But I'm afraid I'll have to be content with using the profits from my share of their sale to buy legitimate artifacts for my personal collection."

Fernando Matos hungrily devoured the sight of the golden army with his eyes while he mentally estimated his 2 percent cut of the spoils. "We have nothing that can touch this in our National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City."

"You can always donate your share," said Oxley sarcastically.

Matos shot him a barbed look and started to say something but was cut off by the approach of Colonel Campos. "Lieutenant Ramos reports from the cavern that no objects remain inside the mountain. As soon as he and his men arrive from below, they will load the objects. Then I will be on my way to the airstrip to oversee the transshipment."

"Thank you, Colonel," Zolar said politely. He didn't trust Campos as far as he could throw the stone demon. "If you have no objections, the rest of us will join you."

"But of course." Campos looked around the nearly vacated summit. "And your other people?"

Zolar's deepset eyes took on a cold look. "My brother Cyrus and his crew will follow in our helicopter as soon as they tie up a pair of loose ends."

Campos understood. He smiled cynically. "It makes me sick to think about all the bandits running loose to rob and murder foreign visitors."

While they waited for Lieutenant Ramos and his squad to exit the passageway and load the artifacts, Matos walked over and inspected the stone demon. He reached out and laid his hand on the neck and was surprised at the coolness of the stone after it had been absorbing the sun's rays all day. Abruptly, he jerked his hand back. It felt as if the cold stone had suddenly turned pliant and slimy like the scaly skin of a fish.

He stepped back, startled, and half spun around to hurry away. At that instant he saw a human head rising over the edge of the sharp drop in front of the demon. As a man who grew up in a family of university instructors, he did not believe in superstition and folklore. Matos stood frozen more out of curiosity than fright.

The head rose and was seen to be attached to the body of a man who wearily climbed onto the surface of the summit. Then the intruder stood unsteadily for a moment and aimed an old rifle at Matos.

Yuma had lain on a ledge for nearly a full minute, catching his breath and waiting for his heart to slow. When he lifted his head over the rim, he saw a strange looking little man with a bald head and huge glasses, incongruously dressed in a business suit with shirt and tie, staring back at him. To Yuma, the man reminded him of the government officials who passed through the Montolo village once a year, promising aid in the form of fertilizer, feed and grain, and money, but went on their way and never delivered. After climbing over the rim of the slope he also spotted a group of men standing by the army helicopter 30 meters (100 feet) away. They did not notice him. He had planned the climb to terminate behind the great stone demon out of sight of anyone. Except Matos, who unfortunately happened to be standing nearby.

He pointed his worn and scarred old Winchester at the man and spoke softly. "Do not make a sound or you die."

Yuma did not have to look back to confirm that the first of his neighbors and relatives were scrambling onto the mountaintop. He realized that he desperately needed another minute for all of his tiny force to reach high ground. If the man in front of him gave the alarm, all surprise would be lost and the rest of his people would be caught in an exposed position on the mountainside. He had to stall somehow.

Matters were made even worse by the sudden appearance of an officer and a squad of army engineers who walked from a deep fissure in the rock. They looked neither left nor right and headed straight toward what appeared to Yuma as a staggered row of short, golden men.

At seeing the approaching engineers, the helicopter pilot started up his engines and set them on idle and engaged the twin rotors of the big transport.

Beside the stone demon, Matos slowly raised his hands.

"Put your hands down!" Yuma hissed.

Matos did as he was ordered. "How did you get through our security?" he demanded. "What are you doing here?"

"This is my people's sacred ground," Yuma answered quietly. "You are defiling it with your greed."

For every few seconds gained, two more Montolos climbed over the rim of the ledge behind Yuma and formed a group out of sight behind the demon. They had come this far without causing injury or death, and Yuma hated to start now.

"Walk back toward me," he ordered Matos. "Stand next to the demon."

There was a wild, crazed look in Matos's eyes. His lust for golden wealth slowly began to short-circuit his fear. His share would make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. He couldn't give it up because of a band of superstitious Indians. He glanced nervously over his shoulder at the engineers closing with the helicopter. Dread of losing his dreams created an agonizing knot in his stomach.

Yuma could see it coming. He was losing the man in the suit. "You want gold?" said Yuma. "Take it and leave our mountain."

As he saw more men materializing behind Yuma, Matos finally snapped. He turned and began to run, shouting, "Intruders! Shoot them!"

Without lifting his gun and aiming, Yuma fired from the hip, his shot striking Matos in the knee. The bureaucrat jerked sideways, his glasses flew off his head, and he sprawled heavily on his chest. He rolled over on his back, raising his leg and clutching his knee with both hands.

Yuma's relatives and neighbors, guns at the ready, fanned out like ghosts in a cemetery as they encircled the helicopter. Lieutenant Ramos, no fool he, instantly took in the situation. His men were engineers and not infantrymen and carried no weapons. He immediately raised his hands in surrender and shouted to his small squad to do likewise.

Zolar swore loudly. "Where in hell did these Indians come from?"

"No time to reason why," snapped Oxley. "We're pulling out."

He jumped through the cargo hatch and pulled Zolar in after him.

"The gold warriors!" Zolar protested. "They're not loaded."

"Forget them."

"No!" Zolar resisted.

"You damn fool. Can't you see, those men are armed. The army engineers can't help us." He turned and yelled to the pilot of the helicopter. "Lift off! Andale, andale!"

Colonel Campos was slower than the others to react. He stupidly ordered Lieutenant Ramos and his men to resist. "Attack them!" he cried.

Ramos stared at him. "With what, Colonel, our bare hands?"

Yuma and his tribal members were only 10 meters (33 feet) from the helicopter now. So far only one shot had been fired. The sight of the sun glinting off the golden warriors momentarily stunned the Montolos. The only pure gold object any of them had ever seen was a small chalice on the altar of the little mission church in the nearby village of Ilano Colorado.

Dust began to swirl as the pilot applied the throttles and the rotor blades of the helicopter furiously beat the air. The wheels were lifting off the mountain's summit when Campos finally realized discretion was the better part of greed. He ran four steps and leaped toward the cargo door at the urging of Charles Oxley who reached out for him.

At that instant the helicopter lurched sharply upward. Campos's upraised hands caught empty air. His momentum carried him under the helicopter and off the edge of the cliff as if he'd taken a running dive into water. Oxley watched the colonel's body grow smaller and smaller as it turned end over end before smashing onto the rocks far below.

"Good Christ," gasped Oxley.

Zolar, grimly hanging on to a strap inside the cargo bay, did not witness Campos's plunge to the base of the mountain. His concerns were elsewhere. "Cyrus is still down in the cavern."

"He's with Amaru and his men. Not to worry. Their automatic weapons are more than a match for a few Indians carrying hunting rifles and shotguns. They'll leave in the last helicopter still on the mountain."

Only then did it occur to Zolar that someone was missing. "Where's Matos and the colonel?"

"The Indians shot Matos and Campos made his move too late."

"He stayed on Cerro el Capirote?"

"No, he fell off Cerro el Capirote. He's dead."

Zolar's reaction was a psychiatrist's dream. His expression went thoughtful for a moment, and then he broke out laughing. "Matos shot and the good colonel dead. More profits for the family."

Yuma's prearranged plan with Pitt was accomplished. He and his people had secured the summit and forced the evil ones from the sacred mountain of the dead. He watched as two of his nephews led Lieutenant Ramos and his army engineers down the steep trail to the desert floor below.

There was no way to carry Matos. His knee was tightly bandaged and he was forced to hobble along as best he could, assisted by a pair of engineers.

Curiosity drew Yuma to the enlarged opening to the interior passageway. He had a nagging ache to explore the cavern and see with his own eyes the river described by Pitt. The water he saw in his dreams. But the older men were too frightened to enter the bowels of the sacred mountain, and the gold created a problem with the younger men. They wanted to drop everything and carry it off before armed troops returned.

"This is our mountain," said one young man, the son of Yuma's neighboring rancher. "The little golden people belong to us."

"First we must see the river inside the mountain," countered Yuma.

"It is forbidden for the living to enter the land of the dead," warned Yuma's older brother.

A nephew stared at Yuma doubtfully. "There is no river that runs beneath the desert."

"I believe the man who told me."

"You cannot trust the gringo, no more than those with Spanish blood in their veins."

Yuma shook his head and pointed to the gold. "This proves he did not lie."

"The soldiers will come back and kill us if we do not leave," protested another villager.

"The golden people are too heavy to carry down the steep trail," the young man argued. "They must be lowered by rope down the rock walls. That will take time."

"Let us offer prayers to the demon and be on our way," said the brother.

The young man persisted. "Not until the golden people are safely below."

Yuma reluctantly gave in. "So it is, my family, my friends. I will keep my promise and enter the mountain alone. Take the men of gold, but hurry. You do not have much daylight left."

As he turned and walked through the enlarged opening leading to the passageway, Yuma felt little fear.

Good had come from the climb to the top of the mountain. The evil men were cast down. The demon was at peace again. Now, with the blessing of the demon, Billy Yuma felt confident he could safely enter the land of the dead. And maybe find a trail leading to the lost sacred idols of his people.

Loren sat huddled in the cramped rock cell, sinking into the quicksand of self-pity. She had no more fight left in her. The hours had merged until time lost all sense of meaning. She could not remember when she had last eaten. She tried to recall what it felt like to be warm and dry, but that memory seemed like an event that occurred ages ago.

Her self-confidence, the independence, the satisfaction of being a respected legislator in the world's only superpower, meant nothing in that damp little cave. Standing on the floor of the House of Representatives seemed a million light-years away. She had come to the end, and she had fought as long as she could. Now she accepted the end. Better to die and get it over with.

She looked over at Rudi Gunn. He had hardly moved at all in the last hour. She didn't have to be a doctor to see that he had slipped, badly in that time. Tupac Amaru, in a storm of sadistic wrath, had broken several of Gunn's fingers by stomping them. Amaru had also injured Gunn severely by kicking him repeatedly in the stomach and head. If Rudi didn't receive medical attention very soon, he might die.

Loren's mind turned to Pitt. Every conceivable road to freedom was blocked unless he could ride to their rescue at the head of the U.S. Cavalry. Not a likely prospect.

She recalled the other times he had saved her. The first was on board the Russian cruise ship where she was held captive by agents of the old Soviet government. Pitt had shown up and rescued her from a savage beating. The second time was when she was held hostage by the fanatic Hideki Suma in his underwater city off the coast of Japan. Pitt and Giordino had risked their lives to free her and a fellow congressman.

She had no right to give up. But Pitt was dead, crushed by concussion grenades in the sea. If her countrymen could have sent a group of Special Forces over the border to save her, they would have done so by now.

She had watched through the cave opening as the golden treasure was hauled past her cell and through the guardians' chamber up to the peak of the hollow mountain. When all the gold was gone, she knew it would be time for her and Rudi to die.

They did not have to wait long. One of Amaru's foul-smelling henchman walked up to their guard and gave him an order. The ugly slug turned and motioned them out of the cave. "Salga, salga," he commanded them.

Loren shook Gunn awake and helped him rise to his feet. "They want to move us," she told him softly.

Gunn looked at her dazedly, and then incredibly, he forced a tight smile. "About time they upgraded us to a better room."

With Gunn shuffling alongside Loren, her arm around his waist, his over her shoulders, they were led to a flat area between the stalagmites near the shoreline of the river. Amaru was joking with four of his men who were grouped around him. Another man she recognized from the ferryboat as Cyrus Sarason. The Latin Americans appeared cool and relaxed, but Sarason was sweating heavily and his shirt beneath his armpits was stained.

Their one-eyed guard pushed them roughly forward and moved slightly apart from the others. Sarason reminded Loren of a high school coach who was pressed into service as a chaperon at a prom, seeing out a dull and boring duty.

In contrast, Amaru looked as if he were bursting at the seams with nervous energy. Excitement gleamed in his eyes. He stared at Loren with the same intensity as a man crawling through the desert who suddenly sights a saloon advertising cold beer. He came over and roughly cupped Loren's chin with one hand.

"Are you ready to entertain us?"

"Leave her be," said Samson. "There is no need to prolong our stay here."

Something cold and slimy moved through Loren's stomach. Not this, she thought, God not this. "If you're going to kill us, get it over with."

"You'll get your wish soon enough." Amaru laughed sadistically. "But not before you pleasure my men. When they are finished, and if they are satisfied, perhaps they will give you a thumbs-up and let you live. If not, then a thumbs-down like the Romans judging a gladiator in the arena. I suggest you make them happy."

"This is crazy!" snapped Sarason.

"Use your imagination, amigo. My men and I have worked hard helping to transport your gold from the mountain. The least you can do is allow us a small reward for our services before we leave this hellish place."

"You're all getting well paid for your services."

"What is the term you use in your country?" said Amaru, breathing heavily. "Fringe benefits?"

"I don't have time for prolonged sex games," Samson said.

"You will make the time," Amaru hissed, baring his teeth like a coiled snake about to strike. "Or my men will become most unhappy. And then I may not be able to control them."

One look at the five toughs backing up the Peruvian killer and Samson shrugged. "She is of no interest to me." He stared at Loren for a moment. "Do with her what you will, but get it over with. We still have work to do and I don't want to keep my brothers waiting."

Loren was on the verge of throwing up. She looked at Sarason, her eyes imploring. "You're not one of them. You know who I am, whom I represent. How can you stand by and allow this to happen?"

"Barbaric cruelty is a fact of life where they come from," Sarason replied indifferently. "Every one of these vicious misfits would cut a child's throat as casually as you or I would slice a filet mignon."

"So you'll do nothing while they do their perverted work?"

Sarason gave a detached shrug. "It might be rather entertaining."

"You're no better than they are."

Amaru leered. "I find great enjoyment in bringing haughty women like you to their knees."

That was the signal to end the talk. Amaru made a gesture to one of his men. "You may have the honor of going first, Julio."

The others looked disappointed at not being chosen. The lucky one stepped forward, his mouth stretched in a lustful grin, and grabbed Loren by the arm.

Little Rudi Gunn, grievously injured and barely able to stand, suddenly crouched, launched himself forward, and rammed his head into the belly of the man about to assault Loren. His charge had all the impact of a broomstick against the gate of a fortress. The big Peruvian barely grunted before delivering a passionless backhand that sent Gunn sprawling across the floor of the cavern.

"Throw the little bastard in the river," ordered Amaru.

"No!" Loren cried. "For God's sake, don't kill him."

One of Amaru's men took Gunn by the ankle and began dragging him toward the water.

"You may be making a mistake," cautioned Sarason.

Amaru looked at him queerly. "Why?"

"This river probably enters the Gulf. Instead of providing a floating body for identification, perhaps it might be wiser if they disappear forever."

Amaru paused thoughtfully for a moment. Then he laughed. "An underground river that carries them into the Sea of Cortez. I like that. American investigators will never suspect that they were killed a hundred kilometers away from where they're found. The idea appeals to me." He made a motion to the man holding Gunn to continue. "Heave him as far as you can into the current."

"No, please," Loren begged. "Let him live and I'll do whatever you demand."

"You'll do that anyway," Amaru said impassively.

The guard hurled Gunn into the river with the ease of an athlete throwing the shotput. There was a splash, and Gunn vanished beneath tire black water without a word.

Amaru turned back to Loren and nodded at Julio. "Let the show begin."

Loren screamed and moved like a cat. She sprang at the man who gripped her arm and rammed the long nails of her thumbs deeply into his eyes.

An agonized cry echoed through the treasure cavern. The man given the go-ahead to ravage Loren clutched his hands to his eyes and squealed like a stuck pig. Amaru and Sarason and the other men were momentarily paralyzed with surprise as they saw blood flow through his fingers.

"Oh, Mother of Christ!" Julio cried. "The bitch has blinded me!"

Amaru walked up to Loren and slapped her hard across the face. She staggered back but did not fall. "You will pay for, that," he said with icy calm. "When you have served your purpose, you shall receive the same treatment before you die."

The fear in Loren's eyes had been replaced with raging anger. If she'd had the strength, she would have fought them tooth and nail like a tiger before being overpowered. But the days of ill-treatment and starvation had left her too weak. She kicked out at Amaru. He took the blows as if they were no more annoying than an attack by a mosquito.

He caught her flailing hands and twisted them behind her. Thinking he had her helpless, he tried to kiss her. But she spit in his face.

Infuriated, he punched her in her soft belly.

Loren doubled up, choking in agony and at the same time gasping for breath. She sank to her knees and slowly fell on her side, still doubled up and clutching her stomach with her arms.

"Since Julio is no longer able to function," said Amaru, "the rest of you help yourselves."

The outstretched arms of his men, thick and strong, with their fingers hooked like claws, reached out and seized her. They rolled her over on her back and pinned down her arms and legs. Held down in a spread-eagled position by the combined strength of three men, including One-Eye, Loren cried out in defenseless terror.

The tattered remains of her clothing were torn away. The smooth, creamy skin shone under the artificial lights left by the army engineers. The sight of her exposed body aroused the attackers' level of excitement even higher.

The one-eyed Quasimodo knelt down and leaned over her, his breath coming in short pants, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a grimace of animal lust. He pressed his mouth against hers. Her screams were suddenly muffled as he bit her lower lip and she could taste the blood. Loren felt as if she were suffocating in a nightmare. He pulled back and moved rough callused hands over her breasts. They felt like sandpaper to her sensitive skin. Her deep violet eyes were sick with abhorrence. She screamed again.

"Fight me!" the hulk whispered huskily. "I like a woman who fights me."

Loren plunged into the depths of humiliation and horror as One-Eye lowered himself onto her. Her screams of terror turned into a shriek of pain.

Then abruptly, her hands were free and she clawed her attacker across the face. He sat back stunned, parallel streaks of red blooming on both cheeks, and stared dumbly at the two men who had suddenly released her arms and hands. "You idiots, what are you doing?" he hissed.

The men who were facing the river fell backward in open-mouthed shock. They crossed themselves as if warding off the devil. Their eyes were not on the rapist or Loren. They were staring into the river beyond. Confused, Amaru turned and peered into the dark waters. What he saw was enough to turn a sane man mad. His mouth dropped open in shock at the sight of an eerie light moving under the water toward him. They all gaped as if hypnotized as the light surfaced and became part of a helmeted head.

Like some hideous wraith rising from the murky abyss of a watery hell, a human form slowly arose from the black depths of the river and moved toward the shore. The apparition, with black seaweedlike shreds hanging from its body, looked like something that belonged not to this world but to the deepest reaches of an alien planet. The effect was made even more shocking by the reappearance of the dead.

Clenched under the right arm, as a father might carry his child, was the inert body of Rudi Gunn.

Sarason's face looked like a white plaster death mask. Sweat poured down his forehead. For a man who did not excite easily, his eyes were near-crazed with shock. He stood silent, as the monstrosity left him too stunned to speak.

Amaru leaped to his feet and tried to speak, but only a whispered croak came out. His lips quivered as he rasped, "Go back, diablo, go back to infierno."

The phantom gently lowered Gunn to the ground. He removed his helmet with one hand. Then he unzipped the front of his wet suit and reached inside. The. green eyes could be seen now, cast on Loren's exposed position on the cold, hard rock. They glinted under the artificial lights with a terrible anger.

The two men who were still pinning Loren's legs stared dumbly as the Colt thundered once, twice in the cavern Their faces went wildly distorted as their heads snapped back and exploded. They collapsed and fell across Loren's knees.

The others bolted away from Loren as if she had suddenly acquired the black plague. Julio moaned in a far corner unable to see, his hands still over his injured eyes.

Loren was beyond screaming. She stared at the man from the river, recognizing him but convinced she was seeing a hallucination.

The shock of disbelief, then horror at the realization of who the apparition was, made Amaru's heart turn cold. "You!" he gasped in a strangled voice.

"You seem surprised to see me, Tupac," said Pitt easily. "Cyrus looks a little green around the gills too."

"You're dead. I killed you."

"Do a sloppy job, get sloppy results." Pitt cycled the Colt from man to man and spoke to Loren without looking at her. "Are you badly hurt?"

For a moment she was too stunned to answer. Then finally, she stammered, "Dirk. . . is it really you?"

"If there's another one, I hope they catch him before he signs our name to a lot of checks. I'm sorry I didn't get here sooner."

She nodded gamely. "Thanks to you I'll survive to see these beasts pay."

"You won't have to wait long," Pitt said with a voice of stone. "Are you strong enough to make it up the passageway?"

"Yes"yes," Loren murmured as the reality of her salvation began to sink in. She shuddered as she pushed the dead men away from her and rose unsteadily to her feet, indifferent to her nakedness. She pointed down at Gunn. "Rudi is in a bad way."

"These sadistic scum did this to the two of you?"

Loren nodded silently.

Pitt's teeth were bared, murder glaring out of his opaline green eyes. "Cyrus here just volunteered to carry Rudi topside." Pitt casually waved the gun in the direction of Sarason. "Give her your shirt."

Loren shook her head. "I'd rather go nude than wear his sweaty old shirt."

Sarason knew he could expect a bullet, and fright was slowly replaced by self-preservation. His scheming mind began to focus on a plan to save himself. He sagged to the rock floor as if overcome with shock, his right hand resting on a knee only centimeters away from a .38-caliber derringer strapped to his leg just inside his boot. "How did you get here?" he asked, stalling.

Pitt was not taken in by the mundane question. "We came on an underground cruise ship."

"We?"

"The rest of the team should be surfacing at any moment," Pitt bluffed.

Amaru suddenly shouted at his two sound, remaining men. "Rush him!"

They were hardened killers but they had no wish to die. They made no effort to reach for the automatic rifles they had laid aside during the attempt to rape Loren. One look down the barrel of Pitt's .45 beneath the burning eyes was enough to deter anyone who did not cherish suicidal tendencies.

"You yellow dogs!" Amaru snarled.

"Still ordering others to do your dirty work, I see," said Pitt. "It appears I made a mistake not killing you in Peru."

"I vowed then you would suffer as you made me."

"Don't bet your Solpemachaco pension on it."

"You intend to murder us in cold blood," said Sarason flatly.

"Not at all. Cold-blooded murder is what you did to Dr. Miller and God only knows how many other innocent people who stood in your path. As their avenging angel, I'm here to execute you."

"Without the decency of a fair trial," protested Sarason as his hand crept past his knee toward the concealed derringer. Only then did he notice that Pitt's injuries went beyond the bloody gash across the forehead. There was a fatigued droop to the shoulders, an unsteadiness to his stance. The skewed left hand was pressed against his chest. Broken wrist and ribs, Samson surmised. His hopes rose as he realized that Pitt was on the thin edge of collapse.

"You're hardly one to demand justice," said Pitt, biting scorn in his tone. "A pity our great American court system doesn't hand out the same punishment to killers they gave to their victims."

"And you are not one to judge my actions. If not for my brothers and me, thousands of artifacts would be rotting away in the basements of museums around the world. We preserved the antiquities and redistributed them to people who appreciate their value."

Pitt stopped his roving gaze and focused on Sarason. "You call that an excuse? You justify theft and murder on a grand scale so you and your criminal relatives can make fat profits. The magic words for you, pal, are charlatan and hypocrite."

"Shooting me won't put my family out of business."

"Haven't you heard?" Pitt grimly smiled. "Zolar International just went down the toilet. Federal agents raided your facilities in Galveston. They found enough loot to fill a hundred galleries."

Sarason tilted his head back and laughed. "Our headquarters in Galveston is a legitimate operation. All merchandise is lawfully bought and sold."

"I'm talking about the second facility," Pitt said casually.

A flicker of apprehension showed in Sarason's tan face. "There is only one building."

"No, there are two. The storage warehouse separated by a tunnel to transport illegal goods to the Zolar building with a subterranean basement housing smuggled antiquities, an art forgery operation, and a vast collection of stolen art."

Sarason looked as if he'd been struck across the face with a club. "Damn you to hell, Pitt. How could you know any of this?"

"A pair of federal agents, one from Customs, the other from the FBI, described the raid to me in vivid terms. I should also mention that they'll be waiting with open arms when you attempt to smuggle Huascar's treasure into the United States."

Sarason's fingers were a centimeter (less than half an inch) away from the little twin-barreled gun. "Then the joke's on them," he said, resurrecting his blasé facade. "The gold isn't going to the United States."

"No matter," Pitt said with quiet reserve. "You won't be around to spend it."

Hidden by a knee crossed over one leg, Sarason's fingers met and cautiously began slipping the two-shot derringer from his boot. He reckoned that Pitt's injuries would slow any reaction time by a split second, but decided against attempting a snap, wildly aimed shot. If he missed with the first bullet, Samson well knew that despite Pitt's painful injuries there wouldn't be a chance to fire the second. He hesitated as his mind engineered a diversion. He looked over at Amaru and the two men eyeing Pitt with implacable black anger. Julio was of no use to him.

"You are the one who doesn't have long to live," he said. "The Mexican military who assisted us in removing the treasure will have heard your shots and will come bursting in here any minute to cut you down."

Pitt shrugged. "They must be on siesta or they'd have been here by now."

"If we all attacked him at the same time," Sarason said as conversationally as if they were all seated around a dining table, "he might kill two or even three of us before the survivor killed him."

Pitt's expression turned cold and remote. "The question is, who will be the survivor?"

Amaru did not care who would live or die. His dark mind saw no future without his manhood. He had nothing to lose. His hatred for the man who emasculated him triggered a rage fueled by the memory of pain and mental agony. Without a word, he launched himself at Pitt.

In a muscled flash of speed, Amaru closed like a snarling dog, reaching out for Pitt's gun hand. The shot took the Peruvian in the chest and through a lung, the report coming like a booming crack. The impact would have stopped the average man, but Amaru was a force beyond himself, driven like a maddened pit bull. He gave an audible grunt as the air was forced from his lungs, and then he crashed into Pitt, sending him reeling backward toward the river.

A groan burst from Pitt's lips as his cracked ribs protested the collision in a burst of pain. He desperately spun around, throwing off Amaru's encircling grip around his gun hand and hurling him aside. He brought the butt of the Colt down on his assailant's head, but stopped short of a second blow when he spotted the two healthy guards going for their weapons at the edge of his vision.

Through his pain, Pitt's hand instinctively held steady on the Colt. His next bullet dropped the grotesque one eyed guard with a quick shot to the neck. He ignored the blind Julio and shot the remaining henchman in the center of his chest.

Pitt heard Loren's scream of warning as if it were far off in the distance. Too late he saw Sarason pointing the derringer at him. His body lagged behind his mind and moved a fraction slow.

He saw the fire from the muzzle and felt a terrible hammer blow in his left shoulder before he heard the blast. It flung him around, and he went down sprawling in the water with Amaru crawling after him like a wounded bear intent on shredding a disabled fox. The current caught him in its grasp and pulled him from shore. He grabbed desperately at the bottom stones to impede the surge.

Sarason slowly walked to the water's edge and stared at the struggle going on in the river. Amaru had clenched his arms around Pitt's waist and was trying to drag him under the surface. With a callous grin, Sarason took careful aim at Pitt's head. "A commendable effort, Mr. Pitt. You are a very durable man. Odd as it sounds, I will miss you."

But the coup de grace never came. Like black tentacles, a pair of arms circled around Sarason's legs and gripped his ankles. He looked down wildly at the unspeakable thing that was gripping him and began frantically beating at the head that rose between the arms.

Giordino had followed Pitt, drifting down the river. The current had not been as strong as he'd expected upstream from the treasure island and he had been able to painfully drag himself into the shallows unnoticed. He had cursed his helplessness at not being physically able to assist Pitt in fighting off Amaru, but when Sarason unknowingly stepped within reach, Giordino made his move and snagged him.

He ignored the brutal blows to his head. He looked up at Sarason and spoke in a voice that was thick and deep. "Greetings from hell, butthead."

Sarason recovered quickly at the sight of Giordino and jerked one foot free to maintain his balance. Because Giordino made no attempt to rise to his feet, Sarason immediately perceived that his enemy was somehow badly injured from the hips down. He viciously kicked Giordino, hitting one thigh. He was rewarded by a sharp groan as Giordino's body jumped in a tormented spasm and he released Sarason's other ankle.

"From past experience," Sarason said, regaining his composure, "I should have known you'd be close by."

He stared briefly at the derringer, knowing he had only one bullet left, but aware there were four or five automatic weapons lying nearby. Then he glanced at Pitt and Amaru who were locked in a death struggle. No need to waste the bullet on Pitt. The river had taken the deadly enemies in its grip and was relentlessly sweeping them downstream. If Pitt somehow survived and staggered from the water, Sarason had an arsenal to deal with him.

Sarason made his choice. He stooped down and aimed the gun's twin barrels between Giordino's eyes.

Loren threw herself at Sarason's back, flinging her arms around him, trying to stop him. Sarason broke her grip as if it were string and shoved her aside without so much as a glance.

She fell heavily on one of the weapons that had been cast aside, lifted it and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. She didn't know enough about guns to remove the safety. She gave a weak yelp as Sarason reached over and cracked her on the head with the butt of the derringer.

Suddenly he spun around. Gunn, remarkably come to life, had tossed a river stone at Sarason that bounced off his hip with the feeble force of a weakly hit tennis ball.

Sarason shook his head in wonder at the fortitude and courage of people who resisted with such fervor. He almost felt sorry they would all have to die. He turned back to Giordino.

"It seems your reprieve was only temporary," he said with a sneer, as he held the gun at arm's length straight at Giordino's face.

In spite of the agony of his broken legs and the specter of death staring him in the face, Giordino looked up at Sarason and grinned venomously. "Screw you."

The shot came like a blast from a cannon inside the cavern, followed by the thump sound of lead bursting through living flesh. Giordino's expression went blank as Sarason's eyes gazed at him with a strange confused look. Then Sarason turned and mechanically took two steps onto shore, slowly pitched forward and struck the stone floor in a lifeless heap.

Giordino couldn't believe he was still alive. He looked up and gaped at a little man, dressed like a ranch hand and casually holding a Winchester rifle, who walked into the circle of light.

"Who are you?" asked Giordino.

"Billy Yuma. I came to help my friend."

Loren, a hand held against her bleeding head, stared at him. "Friend?"

"The man called Pitt."

At the mention of his name, Loren pushed herself to her feet and ran unsteadily to the river's edge. "I don't see him!" she cried fearfully.

Giordino suddenly felt his heart squeeze. He shouted Pitt's name but his voice only echoed in the cavern. "Oh, God, no," he muttered fearfully. "He's gone."

Gunn grimaced as he sat up and peered downriver into the ominous blackness. Like the others who had calmly faced death only minutes before, he was stricken to find that his old friend had been carried away to his death. "Maybe Dirk can swim back," he said hopefully.

Giordino shook his head. "He can't return. The current is too strong."

"Where does the river go?" demanded Loren with rising panic.

Giordino pounded his fist in futility and despair against the solid rock. "The Gulf. Dirk has been swept toward the Sea of Cortez a hundred kilometers away."

Loren sagged to the limestone floor of the cavern, her hands covering her face as she unashamedly wept. "He saved me only to die."

Billy Yuma knelt beside Loren and gently patted her bare shoulder. "If no one else can, perhaps God will help."

Giordino was heartsick. No longer feeling his own injuries, he stared into the darkness, his eyes unseeing. "A hundred kilometers," he repeated slowly. "Even God can't keep a man alive with a broken wrist, cracked ribs, and a bullet hole in the shoulder through a hundred kilometers of raging water in total darkness."

After making everyone as comfortable as he could, Yuma hurried back up to the summit where he told his story. It shamed his relatives into entering the mountain. They fabricated stretchers out of material left by the army engineers and tenderly carried Gunn and Giordino from the river cavern up the passageway. An older man kindly offered a grateful Loren a blanket woven by his wife.

On Giordino's instructions, Gunn and his stretcher were strapped down in the narrow cargo compartment of the stolen NUMA helicopter abandoned by the Zolars. Loren climbed into the copilot's seat as Giordino, his face contorted in torment, was lifted and maneuvered behind the pilot's controls.

"We'll have to fly this eggbeater together," Giordino told Loren as the pain in his legs subsided from sheer agony to a throbbing ache. "You'll have to work the pedals that control the tail rotors."

"I hope I can do it," Loren replied nervously.

"Use a gentle touch with your bare feet and we'll be okay."

Over the helicopter's radio, they alerted Sandecker, who was pacing Starger's office in the Customs Service headquarters, that they were on their way. Giordino and Loren expressed their gratitude to Billy Yuma, his family, and friends, and bid them a warm goodbye. Then Giordino started the turbine engine and let it warm for a minute while he scanned the instruments. With the cyclic stick in neutral, he eased the collective pitch stick to full down and curled the throttle as he gently pushed the stick forward. Then he turned to Loren.

"As soon as we begin to rise in the air, the torque effect will cause our tail to swing left and our nose to the right. Lightly press the left foot pedal to compensate."

Loren nodded gamely. "I'll do my best, but I wish I didn't have to do this."

"We have no choice but to fly out. Rudi would be dead before he could be manhandled down the side of the mountain."

The helicopter rose very slowly less than a meter off the ground. Giordino let it hang there while Loren learned the feel of the tail rotor control pedals. At first she had a tendency to over control, but she soon got the hang of it and nodded.

"I think I'm ready."

"Then we're off," acknowledged Giordino.

Twenty minutes later, working in unison, they made a perfect landing beside the Customs headquarters building in Calexico where Admiral Sandecker was standing beside a waiting ambulance, anxiously puffing a cigar.

In that first moment when Amaru forced him beneath the water and he could feel the jaws of the current surround his wrecked body, Pitt knew instantly that there was no returning to the treasure cavern. He was doubly trapped-- by a killer who hung on to him like a vise and a river determined to carry him to hell.

Even if both men had been uninjured, it would have been no contest. Cutthroat killer that he was, Amaru was no match for Pitt's experience underwater. Pitt took a deep breath before the river closed over his head, wrapped his good right arm around his chest to protect his fractured ribs and relaxed amid the pain without wasting his strength in fighting off his attacker.

Amazingly, he still kept his grip on the gun, although to fire it underwater would probably have shattered every bone in his hand. He felt Amaru's encircling hold slide from his waist to his hips. The murderer was strong as iron. He clawed at Pitt furiously, still trying for the gun as they spun around in the current like toy dolls caught in a whirlpool.

Neither man could see the other as they swirled into utter darkness. Without the slightest suggestion of light, Pitt felt as though he was submerged in ink.

Amaru's wrath was all that kept him alive in the next forty-five seconds. It did not sink into his crazed mind that he was drowning twice-- his bullet-punctured lung was filling with blood while at the same time he was sucking in water. The last of his strength was fading when his thrashing feet made contact with a shoal that was built up from sand accumulating on the outer curve of the river. He came up choking blood and water in a small open gallery and made a blind lunge for Pitt's neck.

But Amaru had nothing left. All fight had ebbed away. Once out of the water he could feel the blood pumping from the wound in his chest.

Pitt found he was able, by a slight effort, to shove Amaru back into the mainstream of the current. He could not see the Peruvian drift away in the pitch blackness, observe the face drained of color, the eyes glazed in hate and approaching death. But he heard the malevolent voice slowly moving into the distance away from him.

"I said you would suffer," came the words slightly above a hoarse murmur. "Now you will languish and die in tormented black solitude."

"Nothing like being swept up in an orgy of poetic grandeur," said Pitt icily. "Enjoy your trip to the Gulf."

His reply was a cough and a gurgling sound and finally silence.

The pain returned to Pitt with a vengeance. The fire spread from his broken wrist to the bullet wound in his shoulder to his cracked ribs. He was not sure he had the strength left to fight it. Exhaustion slightly softened the agony. He felt more tired than he had ever felt in his life. He crawled onto a dry area of the shoal and slowly crumpled face forward into the soft sand and fell unconscious.

"I don't like leaving without Cyrus," said Oxley as he scanned the desert sky to the southwest.

"Our brother has been in tougher scrapes before," said Zolar impassively. "A few Indians from a local village shouldn't present much of a threat to Amaru's hired killers."

"I expected him long before now."

"Not to worry. Cyrus will probably show up in Morocco with a girl on each arm."

They stood on the end of a narrow asphalt airstrip that had been grooved between the countless dunes of the Altar Desert so Mexican Air Force pilots could hold training exercises under primitive conditions. Behind them, with its tail section jutting over the edge of the sand-swept strip, a Boeing 747-400 jetliner, painted in the colors of a large national air carrier, sat poised for takeoff.

Zolar moved under the shade of the starboard wing and checked off the artifacts inventoried by Henry and Micki Moore as the Mexican army engineers loaded the final piece on board the aircraft. He nodded at the golden sculpture of a monkey that was being hoisted by a large forklift into the cargo hatch nearly 7 meters (23 feet) from the ground. "That's the last of it."

Oxley stared at the barrenness surrounding the airstrip. "You couldn't have picked a more isolated spot to transship the treasure."

"We can thank the late Colonel Campos for suggesting it."

"Any problem with Campos's men since his untimely death?" Oxley asked with more cynicism than sense of loss.

Zolar laughed. "Certainly not after I gave each of them a one-hundred-ounce bar of gold."

"You were generous."

"Hard not to be with so much wealth sitting around."

"A pity Matos will miss spending his share," said Oxley.

"Yes, I cried all the way from Cerro el Capirote."

Zolar's pilot approached and gave an informal salute. "My crew and I are ready when you are, gentlemen. We would like to take off before it's dark."

"Is the cargo fastened down securely?" asked Zolar.

The pilot nodded. "Not the neatest job I've seen. But considering we're not using cargo containers, it should hold until we land at Nador in Morocco, providing we don't hit extreme turbulence."

"Do you expect any?"

"No, sir. The weather pattern indicates calm skies all the way."

"Good. We can enjoy a smooth flight," said Zolar, pleased. "Remember, at no time are we to cross over the border into the United States."

"I've laid a course that takes us safely south of Laredo and Brownsville into the Gulf of Mexico below Key West before heading out over the Atlantic."

"How soon before we touch down in Morocco?" Oxley asked the pilot.

"Our flight plan calls for ten hours and fifty-five minutes. Loaded to the maximum, and then some, with several hundred extra pounds of cargo and a full fuel load, plus the detour south of Texas and Florida, we've added slightly over an hour to our flight time, which I hope to pick up with a tail wind."

Zolar looked at the last rays of the sun. "With time changes that should put us in Nador during early afternoon tomorrow."

The pilot nodded. "As soon as you are seated aboard, we will get in the air." He returned to the aircraft and climbed a boarding ladder propped against the forward entry door.

Zolar gestured toward the ladder. "Unless you've taken a fancy to this sand pit, I see no reason to stand around here any longer."

Oxley bowed jovially. "After you." As they passed through the entry door, he paused and took one last look to the southwest. "I still don't feel right not waiting."

"If our positions were reversed, Cyrus wouldn't hesitate to depart. Too much is at stake to delay any longer. Our brother is a survivor. Stop worrying."

They gave a wave to the Mexican army engineers who stood back from the plane and cheered their benefactors. Then the flight engineer closed and secured the door.

A few minutes later the turbines screamed and the big 747-400 rose above the rolling sand dunes, dipped its starboard wing and banked slightly south of east. Zolar and Oxley sat in a small passenger compartment on the upper deck just behind the cockpit.

"I wonder what happened to the Moores," mused Oxley, peering through a window at the Sea of Cortez as it receded in the distance. "The last I saw of them was in the cavern as the last of the treasure was being loaded on a sled."

"I'll wager Cyrus handled that little problem in concert with Congresswoman Smith and Rudi Gunn," said Zolar, relaxing for the first time in days. He looked up and smiled at his personal serving lady as she offered two glasses of wine on a tray.

"I know it sounds strange, but I had an uneasy feeling they wouldn't be easy to get rid of."

"I have to tell you. The same thing crossed Cyrus's mind too. In fact, he thought they were a pair of killers."

Oxley turned to him. "The wife too? You're joking."

"No, I do believe he was serious." Zolar took a sip of the wine and made an expression of approval and nodded. "Excellent. A California cabernet from Chateau Montelena. You must try it."

Oxley took the glass and stared at it. "I won't feel like celebrating until the treasure is safely stored in Morocco and we learn that Cyrus has left Mexico."

Shortly after the aircraft had reached what the brothers believed was cruising altitude, they released their seat belts and stepped into the cargo bay where they began closely examining the incredible golden collection of antiquities. Hardly an hour had passed when Zolar stiffened and looked at his brother queerly.

"Does it feel to you like we're descending?"

Oxley was admiring a golden butterfly that was attached to a golden flower. "I don't feel anything."

Zolar was not satisfied. He leaned down and stared through a window at the ground less than 1000 meters (less than 3300 feet) below.

"We're too low!" he said sharply. "Something is wrong."

Oxley's eyes narrowed. He looked through an adjoining window. "You're right. The flaps are down. It looks like we're coming in for a landing. The pilot must have an emergency."

"Why didn't he alert us?"

At that moment they heard the landing gear drop. The ground was rising to meet them faster now. They flashed past houses and railroad tracks, and then the aircraft was over the end of the runway. The wheels thumped onto concrete and the engines howled in reverse thrust. The pilot stood on the brakes and soon eased off on the throttles as he turned the huge craft onto a taxiway.

A sign on the terminal read Welcome to El Paso.

Oxley stared speechless as Zolar blurted, "My God, we've come down in the United States!"

He ran forward and began beating frantically on the cockpit door. There was no reply until the huge plane came to a halt outside an Air National Guard hangar at the opposite end of the field. Only then did the cockpit door slowly crack open.

"What in hell are you doing? I'm ordering you to get back in the air immediately--" Zolar's words froze in his throat as he found himself staring down the muzzle of a gun pointed between his eyes.

The pilot was still seated in his seat, as were the copilot and flight engineer. Henry Moore stood in the doorway gripping a strange nine-millimeter automatic of his own design, while inside the cockpit Micki Moore was talking over the aircraft radio as she calmly aimed a Lilliputian .25-caliber automatic at the pilot's neck.

"Forgive the unscheduled stop, my former friends," said Moore in a commanding voice neither Zolar nor Oxley had heard before, "but as you can see there's been a change of plan."

Zolar squinted down the gun barrel, and his face twisted from shock to menacing anger. "You idiot, you blind idiot, do you have any idea what you've done?"

"Why, yes," Moore answered matter-of-factly. "Micki and I have hijacked your aircraft and its cargo of golden artifacts. I believe you're aware of the old maxim: There is no honor among thieves."

"If you don't get this plane in the air quickly," Oxley pleaded, "Customs agents will be swarming all over it."

"Now that you mention it, Micki and I did entertain the idea of turning the artifacts over to the authorities."

"You can't know what you're saying."

"Oh, I most certainly do, Charley, old pal. As it turns out, federal agents are more interested in you and your brother than Huascar's treasure."

"Where did you come from?" Zolar demanded.

"We merely caught a ride in one of the helicopters transporting the gold. The army engineers were used to our presence and paid no attention as we climbed aboard the plane. We hid out in one of the restrooms until the pilot left to confer with you and Charles on the airstrip. Then we seized the cockpit."

"Why would federal agents take your word for anything?" asked Oxley."

"In a manner of speaking, Micki and I were once agents ourselves," Moore briefly explained. "After we took over the cockpit, Micki radioed some old friends in Washington who arranged your reception."

Zolar looked as if he were about to tear Moore's lungs out whether he got shot in the attempt or not. "You and your lying wife made a deal for a share of the antiquities. Am I right?" He waited for a reply, but when Moore remained silent he went on. "What percentage did they offer you? Ten, twenty, maybe as high as fifty percent?"

"We made no deals with the government," Moore said slowly. "We knew you had no intention of honoring our agreement, and that you planned to kill us. We had planned to steal the treasure for ourselves, but as you can see, we had a change of heart."

"The way they act familiar with guns," said Oxley, "Cyrus was right. They are a pair of killers."

Moore nodded in agreement. "Your brother has an inner eye. It takes an assassin to know one."

A pounding came from outside the forward passenger door on the deck below. Moore gestured down the stairwell with his gun. "Go down and open it," he ordered Zolar and Oxley.

Sullenly, they did as they were told.

When the pressurized door was swung open, two men entered from a stairway that had been pushed up against the aircraft. Both wore business suits. One was a huge black man who looked as if he might have played professional football. The other was a nattily dressed white man. Zolar immediately sensed they were federal agents.

"Joseph Zolar and Charles Oxley, I am Agent David Gaskill with the Customs Service and this is Agent Francis Ragsdale of the FBI. You gentlemen are under arrest for smuggling illegal artifacts into the United States and for the theft of countless art objects from private and public museums, not excluding the unlawful forgery and sale of antiquities."

"What are you talking about?" Zolar demanded.

Gaskill ignored him and looked at Ragsdale with a big toothy smile. "Would you like to do the honors?"

Ragsdale nodded like a kid who had just been given a new disk player. "Yes, indeed, thank you."

As Gaskill cuffed Zolar and Oxley, Ragsdale read them their rights.

"You made good time," said Moore. "We were told you were in Calexico."

"We were on our way aboard a military jet fifteen minutes after word came down from FBI headquarters in Washington," replied Ragsdale.

Oxley looked at Gaskill, a look for the first time empty of fear and shock, a sudden look of shrewdness. "You'll never find enough evidence to convict us in a hundred years."

Ragsdale tilted his head toward the golden cargo. "What do you call that?"

"We're merely passengers," said Zolar, regaining his composure. "We were invited along for the ride by Professor Moore and his wife."

"I see. And suppose you tell me where all the stolen art and antiquities in your facility in Galveston came from?"

Oxley sneered. "Our Galveston warehouse is perfectly legitimate. You've raided it before and never found a thing."

If that's the case," said Ragsdale craftily, "how do you explain the tunnel leading from the Logan Storage Company to Zolar International's subterranean warehouse of stolen goods?"

The brothers stared at each other, their faces abruptly gray. "You're making this up," said Zolar fearfully.

"Am I? Would you like me to describe your tunnel in detail and provide a brief rundown on the stolen masterworks we found?"

"The tunnel-- you couldn't have found the tunnel."

"As of thirty-six hours ago," said Gaskill, "Zolar International and your clandestine operation known as Solpemachaco are permanently out of business."

Ragsdale added. "A pity your dad, Mansfield Zolar, aka the Specter, isn't still alive or we could bust him too."

Zolar looked as if he were in the throes of cardiac arrest. Oxley appeared too paralyzed to move.

"By the time you two and the rest of your family, partners, associates, and buyers get out of prison, you'll be as old as the artifacts you stole."

Federal agents began filling the aircraft. The FBI took charge of the air crew and Zolar's serving lady while the Customs people unbuckled the tie-down straps securing the golden artifacts. Ragsdale nodded to his team.

"Take them downtown to the U.S. Attorney's Office." As soon as the shattered art thieves were led into two different cars, the agents turned to the Moores.

"I can't tell you how grateful we are for your cooperation," said Gaskill. "Nailing the Zolar family will put a huge dent in the art theft and artifact smuggling trade."

"We're not entirely benevolent," said Micki, happily relieved. "Henry feels certain the Peruvian government will post a reward."

Gaskill nodded. "I think you've got a sure bet."

"The prestige of being the first to catalogue and photograph the treasure will go a long way toward enhancing our scientific reputations," Henry Moore explained as he holstered his gun.

"Customs would also like a detailed report on the objects, if you don't mind?" asked Gaskill.

Moore nodded vigorously. "Micki and I will be happy to work with you. We've already inventoried the treasure. We'll have a report for you before it's formally returned to Peru."

"Where will you store it all until then?" asked Micki.

"In a government warehouse whose location we can't reveal," answered Gaskill.

"Is there any news on Congresswoman Smith and the little man with NUMA?"

Gaskill nodded. "Minutes before you landed we received word they were rescued by a local tribe of Indians and are on their way to a local hospital."

Micki sank down into a passenger seat and sighed. "Then it's over."

Henry sat on an armrest and took her hand in his. "It is for us," he said gently. "From now on we'll live the rest of our lives together as a pair of old teachers in a university with vine-covered walls."

She looked up at him. "Is that so terrible?"

"No," he said, kissing her lightly on the forehead, "I think we can handle it."

Slowly climbing from the depths of a dead stupor, Pitt felt as if he were struggling up a mud-slick slope, only to slip back every time he reached out and touched consciousness. He tried to retain a grip on these brief moments of awareness, only to fall back into a void. If he could open his eyes, he thought vaguely, he might return to reality. Finally, with a mighty effort, he forced open his eyelids.

Seeing only grave-cold blackness, he shook his head in despair, thinking he had fallen back into the void. And then the pain came rushing back like a burst of fire, and he came fully awake. Rolling sideways and then forward into a sitting position, he swung his head from side to side, trying to shake off the fog that clung to the alcoves of his mind. He renewed his fight with the pounding ache in his shoulder, the stiff hurt in his chest, and the sting from his wrist. Tenderly he felt the gash on his forehead.

"A hell of a fine specimen of manhood you are," he muttered.

Pitt was surprised to find that he didn't feel overly weak from loss of blood. He unclipped from his forearm the flashlight that Giordino had given him after their drop over the falls, switched it on, and propped it in the sand so the beam was aimed at his upper torso. He unzipped his wet suit jacket and tenderly probed the wound in his shoulder. The bullet had passed through the flesh and out his back without striking the scapula or the clavicle. The neoprene rubber on his shredded but still nearly skintight wet suit had helped seal the opening and restrict the flow of blood. Relieved that he did not feel as drained as he thought he would, he relaxed and took stock of his situation. His chances of survival were somewhere beyond impossible. With 100 kilometers (62 miles) of unknown rapids, sharp cascades, and extensive river passages that passed through caverns completely immersed with water, he did not need a palmist to tell him that the life line running across his hand would halt long before he reached senior citizenship. Even if he had air passages the entire way, there was still the distance from the opening of the subterranean channel to the surface of the Gulf.

Most other men who found themselves in a Hades of darkness deep within the earth with no hope of escape would have panicked and died tearing their fingers to the bone in a vain attempt to claw their way to the surface. But Pitt was not afraid. He was curiously content and at peace with himself.

If he was going to die, he thought, he might as well get comfortable. With his good hand he dug indentations in the sand to accommodate his body contour. He was surprised when the flashlight beam reflected from a thousand golden specks in the black sand. He held up a handful under the light.

"This place is loaded with placer gold," he said to himself.

He shone the light around the cavern. The walls were cut with ledges of white quartz streaked with tiny veins of gold. Pitt began laughing as he saw humor in the implausibility of it all.

"A gold mine," he proclaimed to the silent cave. "I've made a fabulously rich gold strike and nobody will ever know it."

He sat back and contemplated his discovery. Someone must be telling him something, he thought. Just because he wasn't afraid of the old man with the scythe didn't mean he had to give up and wait for him. A stubborn resolve sparked within him.

Better to enter the great beyond after an audacious attempt at staying alive than to throw in the towel and go out like a dishrag, he concluded. Perhaps other adventurous explorers would give up everything they owned for the honor of entering this mineralogical sanctum sanctorum, but all Pitt wanted now was to get out. He rose to his feet, inflated the buoyancy compensator with his breath and walked into the water until he was adrift in the current that carried him along.

Just take it one cavern at a time, he told himself, flashing the light on the water ahead. There was no relying on eternal vigilance. He was too weak to fight rapids and fend off rocks. He could only be calm and go wherever the current took him. He soon felt as if he had been cruising from one gallery to another for a lifetime.

The roof of the caverns and galleries rose and fell with monotonous regularity for the next 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). Then he heard the dreaded rumble of approaching rapids. Thankfully, the first chute Pitt encountered was of medium roughness. The water crashed against his face and he went under churning froth several times before reaching placid water again.

He was granted a comfortable reprieve as the river turned smooth and ran through one long canyon in an immense gallery. When he reached the end nearly an hour later, the roof gradually sloped down until it touched the water. He filled his lungs to the last crowded millimeter and dived. Able to use only one arm and missing his swim fins, the going was slow. He aimed the flashlight at the jagged rock roof and swam on his back. His lungs began to protest the lack of oxygen, but he swam on. At last the light revealed an air pocket. He shot to the surface and mightily inhaled the pure, unpolluted air that had been trapped deep beneath the earth millions of years ago.

The small cave widened into a large cavern whose ceiling arched beyond the beam of the flashlight. The river made a sweeping turn where it had formed a reef of polished gravel. Pitt crawled painfully onto the dry area to rest. He turned off the light to prolong the life of the batteries.

Abruptly, he flicked the flash on again. Something had caught his eye in the shadows before the light blinked out. Something was there, not 5 meters (16 feet) away, a black form that revealed a straight line aberrant to natural geometrics.

Pitt's spirits soared as he recognized the battered remains of the Wallowing Windbag. Incredibly, the Hovercraft had come through the horrific fall over the cataract and had been cast up here after drifting nearly 40 kilometers. At last a gleam of hope. He stumbled across the gravel beach to the rubber hull and examined it under his light.

The engine and fan had been torn from their mountings and were missing. Two of the air chambers were punctured and deflated, but the remaining six still held firm. Some of the equipment was swept away, but four air tanks, the first-aid kit, Duncan's plastic ball of colored water dye tracer, one of Giordino's paddles, two extra flashlights, and the waterproof container with Admiral Sandecker's thermos of coffee and four bologna sandwiches had miraculously survived.

"It seems my state of affairs has considerably improved," Pitt said happily to nobody but the empty cavern.