Legend

19

The president listened with difficulty to Niles as he gave the latest update on the Group's incursion into the Amazon tributary. He was finding it harder and harder to concentrate on the words the director was saying. He had informed the First Lady about the predicament their daughter was in; he couldn't keep it from her any longer, unable to lie about something that was clearly showing on his face every time he saw her.

"The latest coordinates have been passed onto Proteus so they will have a general idea where they will need to orbit." Niles repeated the longitude and latitude.

"Anything else?"

"Not yet, Mr. President, Pete Golding and I have been assembling a time-line and historical record for everything we have on Padilla and the subsequent expeditions to that area. A most important bit of intelligence should be in our hands soon. A man in his nineties, Dr. Allan Freeman, a retired professor from the University of Chicago, will be able to finally tell us what it was he was doing down there in 1942."

The president could hardly pay attention to these details. "When is Collins going into the mine?"

"They are starting now."

The national security advisor sat with the president on one of the two couches arranged in front of his desk, waiting for the president to continue. But the man sat silently, the fingers of his right hand rubbing his right temple.

"Sir, you were saying?" prodded Nathan Ambrose.

The president looked up and seemed lost for a moment, not recognizing the face looking at him. Then he shook his head as if startled awake.

"I'm sorry, Nathan. Caught me there, didn't you?"

"Is there something happening that you're not telling me about?"

The president looked at him and said nothing.

Ambrose tossed his notebook onto the coffee table and leaned forward on the couch.

"Has the secretary of state made any headway with your request for assistance from Brazil?"

"No, for some reason Brazil is acting as though the Zachary expedition was a cover for something else. They're stonewalling the secretary."

"Have you spoken with the Brazilian president yourself?"

"No, Secretary Nussbaum informed me that the president will not speak to me directly, but only through the secretary's official office. He's even threatened to go to the UN Security Council."

Ambrose had to admire the secretary; he did have the balls it took to run this country. Keeping the leaders of both countries at arm's length could only cloud an already confusing state.

The door from the outer office opened and a Secret Service officer stepped in.

"Sir, the First Lady is on her way down for the reception."

The president stood and walked to his desk as he pulled up the knot of his tie and buttoned his jacket.

"Sorry, we'll pick this up later."

"Sir, I'm your national security advisor. You have to tell me what's happening here."

The president straightened his tie and then brushed at his lapels. "It's being handled. But if things become more active, I'll get you up to date."

"Sir, you're moving whole carrier groups around the Pacific. You shut down Panamanian airspace for three hours without any official explanation, and the secretary of state is trying hard to avert a conflict with a friendly neighbor where there wasn't a conflict this morning."

"Later, Nathan," the president said, clenching his teeth. His jaw muscles worked visibly beneath his skin as he glared at his advisor, then he brushed passed him.

Ambrose watched his boss leave and then counted to three. He moved quickly to the president's phone, then quickly looked up to make sure the doors were closed. He had decided to take a very dangerous but necessary chance three hours earlier while the president was with the First Lady. He had placed a small bug inside the cap of the receiver, a small gift from a friend across the river. He deftly unscrewed the cap, transferred the small device to his pocket, then replaced the cap. He then moved swiftly away from the desk. None too soon, as the outer door opened and a Secret Service agent stepped through.

"Mr. Ambrose, you know this area is off limits when the president isn't in." "Yes, I was just gathering my briefing materials; the president left rather abruptly." The national security advisor made a show of reaching for his case as the agent reached out and held the door open for him, the move so sudden it made Ambrose nervous.

Once in his own office, Ambrose decided that the information on the miniature recorder couldn't wait. He had to know what was going on. He removed the small round object from his pocket and placed it inside a small device that resembled an iPod. He quickly tapped the play button as he put on his headphone. A voice he didn't recognize explained to the president a plan Ambrose just couldn't believe. As he listened, he jotted down the coordinates Niles Compton had given in his last phone conversation. This information had to be placed in the hands of the secretary as soon as possible. The national security advisor had to stop this mission at all costs. How had the military sneaked Proteus by him?

Ten minutes later, after he had used several sources in the military to confirm the existence of Proteus and its abilities, he placed a call to the U.S. embassy in Brazil. The private cell phone number was answered by the American secretary of state.

"I hope you've come through for us, Mr. Top Advisor."

Ambrose didn't like the tone the secretary was taking with him lately. They would have to discuss their roles in this melodrama at a later date.

"You believe the president already has people on the ground in Brazil. Well, I may have just confirmed it."

"Imagine that, the national security advisor to the president of the United States has come up with something concerning the military he was supposed to be overseeing in the first place. I'm stunned. I'll have you know, I also have people on the ground, thanks to our Brazilian Air Force friend."

Ambrose closed his eyes and waited for the secretary's sarcasm to run its course. Lying to both presidents must be taking its toll, and it was coming through in the cabinet member's temper.

The advisor continued, "I can't confirm the rescue attempt, but I believe I may have come across their security blanket against your mercenaries. And it's right up the road you wanted to go. To protect the ground unit in the Amazon Basin, the president has ordered up a Proteus scenario."

"That Star Wars crap the air force has? I thought that project had been shelved."

"It was. But the air force flexed its muscle and got one prototype built before the cancellation."

"So, what's this to do with what I need?"

"Think, Mr. Secretary. In order for Proteus to be of any value, they have to be on station."

There was silence on the other end of the phone and Ambrose couldn't resist a smirk. Having the upper hand in talking with the secretary was a situation he liked very much.

The national security advisor decided to spell it out. "They'll have to intrude on Brazilian airspace to accomplish their mission against the force you arrayed. However, I am now in possession of the coordinates where Proteus will be taking up station. I'm sure the president of Brazil would be none too happy over having their sovereign territory not only invaded but their airspace compromised. Down that plane and there will be no helping the ground team when they need it most. Let's see the president talk his way out of that one. I think you may say that he has pulled the rug out from under your diplomatic efforts, wouldn't you?"

"Yes, I believe you have indeed earned your spot in my new cabinet, Mr. Ambrose. I will contact our friend in the Brazilian government and get his guarantee of action."

"Not too hard to do with what you have hanging over his head already."

"Remember, Mr. Advisor, we're still talking about American men in that aircraft and the people on the ground. I just hope we haven't gone too far."

"By my estimation, Mr. Secretary, we've gone just far enough already. We have covered exactly thirteen steps up the gallow's staircase. And with your official statements to both sides confusing the issue of a rescue, I would think its safe to say that the few remaining steps to the hangman's rope are already in the bank. I see no other choice here."

"Give me the coordinates."

Jack had several operations going at once: Charles Ray Jackson was on the sonar in a constant watch for their underwater friend. Tom Stiles was atop the main mast finishing up the repairs to the satellite communications dish, and Mendenhall and Sanchez were working on Operation Spoiled Sport: In the darkness surrounding the lagoon, they were attaching small battery-operated heat cells to nylon line attached to semitransparent Mylar balloons, which would be raised with the help of the helium tank Sanchez had carried in a backpack as the men made their way nervously around the perimeter of the lagoon. The balloons would raise a package that emitted a high-temperature signature through the use of heating coils in the foot-long cylinder.

"I hope those monkeys don't try and mess with these. The major seemed pretty adamant about having them in place and operating on time," Mendenhall said as he nervously eyed the trees around them.

Sanchez pressed the release valve on the hose and the large balloon filled with helium. Then the heat transponder was attached, and he slowly allowed the nylon line to play out through his fingers. They were on their thirteenth one; each one had to be placed as close to the tree canopy as they could get it. By the time they were finished they would have fifty balloons raised to a height of two hundred feet above the highest of the trees. Once that was done, the team would use the Zodiac to travel to the shore and tie every balloon to the roots of trees. Thus the entire lagoon would be lined with the heat-emitting elements.

Inside the engineering section, Jenks was preparing Snoopy 3 for her journey into the mine. The probe was five and a half feet long and had a pop-up floodlight and camera on each of four points. But the problem with using that much power for the illumination and cameras was that Snoopy 3 had a battery lifespan of less than an hour.

He reached for the intercom. "Okay, you in there?"

"This is Everett in sonar. Anytime you want, Chief."

"Go ahead, Toad, blast the hell out of the water and get me some readings to feed into Snoopy — and give it full amplitude."

Outside in the water, a sound wave was created by the loud sonar ping. The signal bounced off the rock walls and bounced around until it found its way back to Teacher, where the size of and distance to all underwater obstructions were recorded. Again the ping sounded, and again. Fifteen times at ten-second intervals, the sound bounced around the lagoon and even into the mine itself.

Robby watched the animal from within an enclosure in the cave as it moved around the darkened central cavern. He could see the amphibian turn and stare at him. Robby knew the beast was aware of its being observed. It had seemed agitated when it had returned only minutes before to herd several more members of the expedition team into the cave: two students who were carrying a third between them. In the semidarkness he couldn't make out who they were. He'd heard a lot of screaming by the animal but it had finally got its point across, and the three women had gone inside another of the dug-out slave enclosures. Then Robby had heard cries of relief from the people already inside, at the sudden reunion.

But now the beast traversed the floor of the cave. Every now and then it would raise its face toward the ceiling and then cock its head to one side. It seemed to be listening for something. Afterward, it would lower its head and look directly at Robby, stabbing him with its eyes across a hundred feet of cave. It would growl and shake its head and half swipe in his direction, as if it was he who was causing whatever distress it was obviously feeling.

"Did you see who they brought in?" Kelly whispered from behind him.

Robby didn't move his eyes from the animal. "No, they were pushed into the enclosure too fast. Look, it's acting strange. Something must be going on."

Kelly studied the beast as it just stood there. It tilted its head again and again, from one side to the other, and raised its right hand into the air as if trying to grasp something that wasn't there.

"My god, it's hearing something and is confused by it. Either that or the sound is making it uncomfortable. See how it's snapping its hand? Sound waves."

The creature suddenly placed both enormous hands over the sides of its head. It emitted a roar that echoed off the walls of the cave. It looked straight at Robby and Kelly, roared again, and took a menacing step toward them. Then abruptly it turned and awkwardly walked toward the grotto and fell in. There was a quick splash and the animal vanished under the clear water.

Rob walked around in the cave but could hear nothing. Kelly, on her hands and knees, began to crawl out of the enclosure, after the animal. "Robby, do you feel that?"

Robby stood stock still, but still didn't feel or hear anything.

Kelly crawled all the way out and stood. She ran as fast as the darkness would permit to the edge of the grotto, then went down on her hands and knees once again. Her palms were spread out on the floor of the cave.

"What are—"

"Shhh—"

"Come on, what's—"

"Come down here and feel," Kelly said as she felt around closer to the water. Then she suddenly placed her right ear to the wet stone. Robby finally joined her and pressed his ear to the ground.

"Don't you hear that?" she asked. Robby couldn't figure out what she was listening to.

Kelly, smiling, sat back up.

"What are you smiling about?" he asked.

"I think we have company in the lagoon, maybe our rescuers."

He looked from Kelly back to the floor of the cave. Whatever she had felt or heard had eluded him. There was a steady sound but he didn't know what it was.

"Active sonar. Someone out there is pinging the lagoon!"

Now Robby understood. The feeling through his fingertips, and the steady beat of sound that he had felt, was the sound of sonar as it pulsed through the lagoon outside and was acoustically transferred to the grotto through the best conducting material there was: water.

"What's wrong?" Kelly asked when she saw his face.

"That animal didn't look too happy when it left here. It was feeling the sonar pulses, too."

"Damn!" she exclaimed.

"Yeah, I hope whoever is out there is paying attention, because our slave master is about to pay them a visit."

"Well, she's ready," Jenks said into the intercom as he reached out for the lever that opened the small two-door hatch at the bottom near the bilges. He winched Snoopy 3 into the murky lagoon, then made his way back to the main lounge, where everyone had gathered for their first glimpse into the mine. Even in the radar and communications room, Jackson leaned forward in his seat to watch, and accidentally hit the Sonar Contact Alarm switch, an audible warning system that allowed the operator to be warned of the approach of something moving toward Teacher. When the switch was accidentally thrown, it effectively converted the sonar's programmed task to an ordinary eyes-only sweep.

Twenty feet beneath the keel of Teacher, the creature was now swimming on its back, kicking easily as it stared upward at the bottom of the boat. Every few minutes it would rise and run a hand along the hull and then quickly dart away. When Snoopy 3 was lowered into the water, the beast swam quickly toward the opened hatch but came up short when the doors silently closed. The hand slowly reached out and touched Snoopy's smooth, torpedolike shape. When the probe did nothing but sit there at zero buoyancy, the amphibian gently slapped at it, then struck it again as the device dipped its nose and then righted level. The beast became bored with the small craft and swam once again along the bottom, every once in a while rising and quickly peering through the underwater windows of Teacher. Finally it came to a window where several people sat on the opposite side of the clear acrylic. It closely examined all the faces within its view, slowly becoming agitated by what it saw. A second, smaller animal approached and was quickly chased away by the larger, more aggressive one. Even several of the plesiosaurs came close, out of curiosity, and were abruptly swiped at. They shot off into the lower extremities of the lagoon.

There was a buzz of excitement as Jenks made his way to the additional control panel he had installed in the lounge. Virginia was already there and he smiled at her as he sat down next to her. Jack was leaning against the bulkhead, Sarah sitting in front of him, by the large underwater window. Carl and Danielle were seated next to her. When Jack nodded, Jenks turned to the controls and threw a switch. The four monitors arrayed around the lounge came to life, along with the six-inch screen in front of Jenks. The probe's nose camera came on at the same time as the lights did, and they saw the bright green waters of the lagoon illuminate in a twelve-foot diameter around Snoopy 3 as the small craft bobbed just below the surface.

"Here we go," the master chief said as he toggled Snoopy forward and down into the depths. Virginia patted his leg and then placed her hands in her lap.

Snoopy made a half circle under the boat and came out the opposite side, then made for a compass heading of magnetic north, toward the falls. As it approached, the water became choppier, but the master chief held it on course and depth, only adjusting the speed as he advanced the throttle to compensate for a current that was starting to push the probe back toward the center of the lagoon. Then Snoopy started forward again, its thruster started to gain a foothold in the current. To conserve power, Jenks kept only the forward light and camera on, the latter now picking up white water ahead as the two-hundred-foot falls struck the lagoon's surface. He lowered Snoopy's nose as the water became rough. He sent the device deep to smooth out its ride beneath the catarata. Ellenshaw was so nervous during this that he began ringing his hands together until Heidi reached and stilled them.

Despite its depth, Snoopy 3 was in tumult as it reached the cascading falls. Its nose dipped again as the free-falling water above the device created turbulence as deep as thirty-five feet. Snoopy rolled to the right as the nose came up, only to immediately lose buoyancy as the full weight of the falls struck its hardened plastic body. On camera, it almost looked as if the probe were being manhandled by otherworldly forces as it was tossed by the natural falls. Jenks wasn't too concerned, as his concentration was centered on the panel in front of him, where he had readouts showing speed, depth, and power usage. He held steady, then throttled back as the vortex of water pressure started to lessen. Most everyone in the room breathed a sigh of relief as Snoopy edged its way past the extreme edge of the waterfall and into calmer waters.

"Chief, can we get a fathometer reading on the depth of the water where she's at right now," Sarah asked.

Jenks toggled a switch. The readout on his remote control panel went from passive to active sonar. "I can only use this a few times, so this will be a quick scan of her surroundings. Just watch the monitors and the readout will appear there."

From within the confines of the ship, everyone in the boat felt as well as heard the powerful sonar ping that coursed through the water.

Outside, below the boat, the animal brought its large hands up to its head and started thrashing about as the loud underwater noise struck. Then it settled down, shaking its head from side to side, as the sound dwindled to nothing.

"There you go. It looks like we have twenty-five on the starboard side, thirty-seven on the port and… well, she's a deep channel, numbers are still going up," Jenks said.

The numbers from the sonar reading resembled those they had received from Teacher when they had probed the bottom of the lagoon. The body of water looked to be bottomless, with the exception of two large shelves on either side of Snoopy. Other than that small anomaly, the shear rock walls appeared to extend down infinitely.

"I am convinced this is a caldera — what we're looking at is a lava shaft that runs hundreds of thousands of feet below the surface here," Sarah said. "There's no other explanation."

"Maybe we just found the front door and long hallway to hell," Jenks joked.

The poorly timed joke was met with deathly silence by everyone. Caldera or underworld, the question remained whether any of the missing students were still alive.

Farbeaux and Mendez faced their men, on the far side of the rapids. The lagoon lay just beyond the bend, and the Frenchman had just seen the American craft sitting at the center of the lagoon, well lit and inviting within this hidden wonder.

"Now am I clear — we are to use the shoreline as cover as we skirt the Americans. We will be lost among the shore clutter if they are actively using sonar as security."

The men nodded. Even Rosolo admired the Frenchman's approach. It was just too bad he would not be following him. He had a detour to make.

Mendez, rotund and ridiculous in his shiny wetsuit, went from man to man speaking Spanish to each. Farbeaux caught a phrase or two. The Colombian was promising they would have riches beyond belief if they succeeded in their mission. Farbeaux suspected the mines were indeed full of gold, but how much could be removed before the Brazilian government moved in to take their find? That fool Mendez thought he could buy off anyone, any government. But why should a government accept his pitiful payout when they could have the entirety of the greatest gold find in history? The greedy Colombian couldn't be allowed to live once they reached El Dorado. The Frenchman didn't need the Brazilian authorities to ever gain full knowledge of the other treasures that were hidden in veins underneath the ground here, which the gold would lead them to. No, he could not allow that.

Farbeaux placed his face mask over his head and made sure his rebreather was operating properly. He held his hand in the air, then slowly lowered it toward the water and started off. He was followed by Mendez and his men. The last to enter the water was Captain Rosolo, who would swim as far as the boat with them.

"It looks like a very wide shelf on the right, about thirty-five feet I would say," Jenks said as Snoopy entered the cave behind the falls. The light picked up the calm water and the master chief proclaimed loudly that there was indeed a current inside, of about three knots.

"That means the waters in here must empty out somewhere," Sarah surmised.

Snoopy shallowed as Jenks pulled upward on the toggle. The camera went from showing a solid green frame of water to a darker variant of the same as it aimed the camera up through the surface of the canal.

"Turning to the right," Jenks called as he angled Snoopy in that direction just as the probe came shallow to fifteen feet.

Carl pointed at the screen. "Look at that! The shelf you were talking about has actually been carved out—"

"Are those steps?" Virginia interrupted.

On the monitor, the camera picked out first one, then two steps that went off into the distance on either side of Snoopy. These first two stone steps led to a third, then a fourth, and on and on.

Jack leaned in closer to the monitor. "Chief, can you get me a shot of the upper areas of the cavern?"

"Yeah, you see something?"

Jack just looked at him and didn't answer.

Jenks adjusted the right-side camera and brought three pounds of ballast into the small probe, tilting it to the left and raising the angle of the camera. As the lights disappeared into the darkness, the camera caught another sight that made everyone's mouth drop. Once again, a strained silence filled the cabin. Onscreen were level upon level of pillars and, beyond them, ornately carved walls.

"Look at those walls, how they angle inward toward the waterfall at the top," Virginia observed with awe.

"A pyramid," Keating said as he studied the camera's moving image. "It's a damned stepped pyramid."

"It's like we're looking at it inside out," Heidi said, moving closer.

Each level of the interior became smaller the farther toward the top they went. Each pillar lining its respective level served as a load-bearing strut, strengthening each story as they climbed higher toward the source of falls. Giant openings were visible beyond the pillars, indicating that there were portals into the mine itself.

"This is an impossible engineering feat," said Keating.

"The Inca must have turned the inside of a natural cave, or lava vent, into a more recognizable architectural interior. After all, they couldn't take anything out of here without praying and having their god Supay sanction the removal of his treasure," Sarah said and then looked around her at everyone. "I'm just guessing, of course." A silence followed.

"I think it's as good a theory as we have at the moment," Virginia finally said.

The camera continued to send back images of the vast expanse of the mine. Because of Snoopy's depth in the water and its being only the right-side lens that poked free of the surface, their view was limited. But to Jack, this information, along with what Sarah had gathered in the diving bell earlier, indicated that the mine shafts not only rose with the pyramid, but also would lead down into the earth, far beyond the level of the lagoon.

"Surfacing," Jenks finally called, anxious to see the pyramid in a better light. He and everyone in the section again leaned forward in their seats, as Snoopy broke the surface. "Turning on all her lights and cameras," he said, and quickly flipped the switches on the other three cameras and three sets of lights.

On the monitor, the screen image separated into four separate camera angles. One showed the long staircase as it rose out of the water and continued another fifteen or twenty steps above the surface of the entrance canal. The steps terminated at what looked like a giant flat rock, about two hundred feet in length.

"A platform?" Heidi wondered aloud.

"Close, Heidi," Jack said, uncrossing his arms. "Do you want to tell them, swabby?" He turned to Carl.

The lieutenant commander rose from his seat next to Danielle and pointed along the image on one of the wall-mounted monitors. "See how this rises out of the water as a solid square of stone with steps petering out in the middle, and then they start up again on either side of this platform? Now, look along the edge of this giant stone — see these?" He pointed to ten different protrusions that lined the edge of the platform. They looked like a set of longhorns, each horn branching out left and right about three feet each. "They're cleats, and what we're looking at here is a dock."

Everyone finally saw it. It was a two-hundred-foot-wide docking area, with two-pronged projections used for tying off boats. The stairs came up from either side of the dock, for swimmers to go to and from the canal.

"Think we can tie up there, Chief?" Jack asked.

"Be awful rough heading through those falls, not like the smaller ones we went through earlier. I don't think so, Major. My bet would be she would be battered to pieces."

"I suspect there may be a mechanism inside that place, which can alter the direction and force of the falls, to draw the fury of the water away from entering and exiting boats," Heidi ventured. "That's how the ancients collected their treasure."

Jack just nodded. On the screen he saw Snoopy back away from the dock, giving the four bright lights a chance to take in more higher up. Several darkened objects became visible on the top of the platform, shapes that the voyagers had come to know intimately. Two towering statues of Supay, the Incan god of the underworld, rose majestically on either side of the huge dock. The stone carvings stared down on Snoopy with belligerent eyes that were heavily lidded and appeared to be made of solid gold as the light from the probe played on it. The artwork was far more meticulous than on the two statues they had passed at the tributary entrance. The stone was studded with gemstones of all shapes and sizes; rubies and emeralds lined the arms and wrists of the giants. The trident and ax were also made of gold, and looked even more lethal than the ones outside. Then the light picked up something on one deity's belly. The statue on the right had been vandalized. Professor Keating loudly voiced his outrage, making everyone else in the lounge jump.

"What kind of a hoax is this?" he shouted as he went to the nearest monitor and raised his glasses. As the others looked at the image closely, just more than one jaw dropped. Curses erupted throughout the lounge. If Jack hadn't been so taken aback he would have laughed. Etched in paint on the belly of the giant deity was a graffito that had traveled from the docks of the Brooklyn shipyards in New York to Africa and through all of Europe and Japan during World War II, once used as a universal marker in all the places where American troops had already been:

"So, how long will you need to decipher this message?" Jenks laughed, but inside he was just as stunned as everyone else.

"After the days and the danger our people faced in finding the Padilla route, we find this?" Heidi said angrily.

"Someone in our government has known all along that this was here," Virginia said, standing up. "What were they after, gold?"

Jack reached out and selected the proper switch on the intercom. "Stiles?"

"Yes, sir?"

"How's the transmitter coming?"

"Been online for five minutes Major; just finished up," Stiles answered from the main mast.

"Good. Get in here and get me Group, ASAP," Jack said as he watched the bobbing and unstable picture from Snoopy 3.

"On my way," was the quick answer.

"This can't be about gold," was all Jack said as he turned toward the radio room.

Rosolo had left the long line of men as they continued on past the American boat. He had easily swerved away without being noticed and swam toward the large hull, which was aglow with bright light emanating from the interior. He would have to be careful to avoid the underwater windows. He reached the stern, slowly made his way to the halfway point amidships, then studied the design. He placed his hand against the hull. He could feel the activity inside even through his gloves. He didn't need a flashlight, as the water was lit up as if he were inside a giant emerald. He reached into his bag and brought out a three-pound limpet charge. He placed it against the hull and pushed, engaging the large suction cups on the back of the mine. Then he traveled down toward the stern, where he'd estimated the boat's engines would be, and placed another charge there. As he set the timers for three minutes, he felt movement around him. It was as if something had swum by at a very fast speed, but as he turned he saw nothing.

Jackson had turned back from the window to his sonar when the major had called for a situation report on the repairs for the radio. He was no longer looking outside, to see the approach of Rosolo or that of the creature. He even failed to notice that he had unintentionally changed the setting of the sonar alarm, the very specialized piece of naval equipment that had been previously activated to warn of the proximity of an underwater threat.

"This is Teacher Actual one, on the line for Group Director Compton," Stiles said into the large handheld phone, then he set the instrument down and switched the communications to the speaker, to enable the voyagers to hold a conference call.

"Jack, where in the hell have you been?" Niles asked.

"Well, we had a bit of wildlife trouble here; knocked out our transmitter."

"Boris and Natasha had your visual for most of the day, and then we had a circuit failure on her and we lost picture. But before the old girl went down we saw who we thought was Stiles on the main mast working on your dish. Any luck finding those kids, Jack?"

"Negative, but we have discovered something we need you to check on."

"What's that?"

With just those two words Jack heard how some of the hope had drained from Niles's voice. Finding no survivors was not what the director had wanted to hear.

"Stand by to receive a fax of a still photo. I think you'll find it interesting."

Stiles placed an eight-by-ten of the graffito painted on the belly of the eighty-foot statue of Supay into the scanner and then hit send.

Several moments later Niles came back on, furious.

"All right, I want you and Carl to disembark Teacher and go it alone in the search. Get everyone else out of there, Jack. We've been had by someone. Either the president is lying outright to me or someone is lying to him, but I'm not taking any chances. Someone knew what was there and didn't warn us — or Helen. Get your people out now!"

"I haven't had a chance to tell you about the two bodies we discovered on the way in," he said.

"What bodies?"

Jack took the next few minutes and explained about Kennedy and the tactical release key. Needless to say, Niles Compton was about to explode, without any nuclear key being inserted.

The creature was watching the shipboard activity through the port window. Sarah entered the lounge area after Jack had gone out to contact Niles. The animal became still as it recognized her face from the diving bell. It then saw Sarah turn and leave, disappearing through the hatch. The creature became agitated once again as it shook its massive head. Then it dove and streaked to the other side of the boat by swiftly passing beneath it. The animal was by no means enraptured by Sarah; on the contrary, it was interested in her because it couldn't figure out how she had transferred from the diving bell into Teacher.

Sudden movement caught the beast's eye at the stern section of the hull. A black form was barely visible there. The beast could see it was alive — an intruder. It kicked out with its legs, and the mighty fins of its feet stirred an invisible vortex through the water as it was propelled at a fantastic speed through the lagoon.

The man felt movement as it passed by and turned, but the creature was already around him and turning back. The animal stilled its actions for a moment. It watched as the intruder rose two feet in the water until he could see inside one of the submerged windows. That was when the amphibian charged through the water straight at Rosolo, who was blessed with a thief's instincts to know when something wasn't right. He turned just before the beast struck. His eyes wide, he tried desperately to swim away.

"The SEAL, Kennedy, had a tactical nuclear arming key on his body, Niles, and he was contaminated with radioactivity, according to the autopsy. So whoever ordered them in here with a tactical weapon more than likely gave them orders to blow up the mine. I need you to find out why they would risk these kids like that."

"I've been on the Kennedy investigation for hours, and so far Pete and I are drawing a blank."

"It has something to do with whatever else is in that mine. I can't believe they would risk a nuclear incident just to protect gold. Find out whose game we're involved in and get it stopped, sir, or we may be up a creek here."

"I'll do my best, but for right now, get our people out of there, Jack; do you understand, get them out. But I have to ask that you and Carl stay to get Helen's team out if at all possible."

Sarah, who had listened in on this part of the conversation, patted Jack on the back and left the communications center to go aft into the lounge once again.

Jackson suddenly noticed the sonar was on the wrong setting. "Major, we have contact, bearing two nine-seven and coming on fast, thirty-two knots and closing!" he said as he reached out and turned the audio alarm back on.

"Niles, we may have a situation here; I'll try and get back to you. It seems our animal friend may be paying us another visit."

"Animal? You mean the goddamned stories are real? That breaks it, Jack, get the hell—"

Niles was cut off as Teacher was jolted by a massive explosion amidships. The detonation sent everyone sprawling to the floor. Teacher immediately started listing to port, taking on two tons of water a minute as her composite hull split and buckled in the very section where everyone else had gathered. The lounge.

The creature took Rosolo by the neck and rammed him straight into the water jet of engine number two, momentarily knocking him senseless. He tried to gather his panicked thoughts when he felt the beast's webbed fingers close once again over his head. Just as his attacker drew back to slam Rosolo's head into the stanchion, the underwater world was rocked by a violence the animal had never encountered before. It released the Colombian and sped away, grasping its head against the pressure wave that slammed into it. Rosolo, lucky beyond measure, was tossed about like a twig in the roiling currents that gripped the waters surrounding Teacher. His very own bombs had saved his life. He shook his head and made for the shore and the mine beyond.

Mendenhall and Corporal Shaw had been working on the damaged engine when the explosion knocked them from their feet. A large piece of composite hull exploded into the engine room and caught Shaw in the chest. Acting like a buzz saw, it sank through his body to his backbone. Mendenhall raised his head out of the water that was quickly filling the bilges and rising above the grated floor. He looked around for Shaw and saw he was dead. The sergeant had been protected from flying debris by the damaged engine they had been working on. However, although he shook his head to clear it, he knew he was partially deaf, as he had heard nothing after the loud roar of the explosion. He looked for the source of the blast and saw a six-foot-diameter hole blown in the aft side, half above and half below the waterline.

"Help me before we sink!" he shouted.

At that moment Sanchez entered quickly through the hatch and then sealed it closed. Looking around, he saw Shaw's body floating and Mendenhall struggling with the diving bell, which had come loose from its cradle.

"Help me!" Mendenhall repeated.

Sanchez moved quickly through the rising water and helped the sergeant, as he realized in an instant what it was he was trying to do.

The bell was swinging back and forth in front of the damaged hull. Sanchez and Mendenhall needed literally to cram the round bell into the smaller hole in the boat's side to stop the flooding. Sanchez knew immediately that the sergeant wasn't going to have enough play on the umbilicus to reach the damaged area, and splashed though the water to the main control.

Mendenhall doubled his efforts to keep the one-ton bell swinging while Sanchez tried to time its movement. It would come close to the hole and then swing backward, always about a foot short of wedging itself in. When he thought he had it timed, Sanchez hit the descend switch that operated the winch, but nothing happened. Then he realized the winch was moving, but very slowly. The bell swung back out again and this time as it started forward, with Mendenhall pushing, he hit the emergency release for the winch. It broke free from the umbilical lines and slammed hard into the hull. The hole exploded with water one last time as the bell settled and successfully blocked most of the damaged area.

"It worked!" Mendenhall screamed for all he was worth. Then he saw Sanchez start stuffing everything he could find into the gaps where the bell hadn't blocked the inrushing water.

They were still sinking, but now they would have an extended life of maybe twenty minutes if they could get under way.

Amidships, all hell had broken loose. Jenks fought to get his head above water but his foot was trapped underneath one of the couches. The master chief thought his leg might also be broken from having been hit sharply by a fallen monitor. He cried out and swore when Professor Keating floated by, face down, in the rising waters. He knew his beloved boat had been dealt a death blow and that he would more than likely go down with it. He struggled but his foot was wedged in good. Every time he moved his leg, he screamed in pain and frustration.

Three feet away, Virginia surfaced. Blood was flowing freely from a broken nose, and at first she thought her left arm was gone. She felt relief when she raised it and saw it still attached, although cut very deeply. She felt a hand on her other arm and saw Danielle surface, choking and coughing up water. Virginia saw crew members' bodies were being tossed like bathtub toys by the incoming tidal wave that was rushing through the damaged hull. Three of the lab technicians were clearly dead; they had been standing right where the explosion had disintegrated the composite material. Then she panicked as her eyes fell on Jenks just as the water started to cover his head.

"Chief!" she yelled, and pushed Danielle forward. "Help me with him!"

They both dove under and were instantly grateful that the lights had remained on. Virginia went low and Danielle high as they both pulled on Jenks's broken leg. He screamed but his foot came out from under the couch and they all surfaced.

As the master chief came up, spitting out dirty water, he saw immediately to what degree they were in trouble. The water was coming in too fast, which told him that whatever had happened had mostly occurred below the water line. He saw Ellenshaw was trying to open the latch to the next compartment.

"No, Professor, no!" Jenks screamed loudly over the noise of the incoming flood. "Stop him! We can't flood the aft areas; we may already be taking in water!"

Danielle broke free and quickly swam over to grab the old man. He turned to her in shock, and for a moment could only point mutely toward the glass porthole of the hatch.

"That section is taking on water, Sarah's in there!" he finally croaked.

Danielle threw the professor aside and looked through the port. Sarah was lying against one of the underwater viewing ports where the damage was sustained; it was cracked and shooting water into that section. Sarah looked unconscious; the water, though not filling that section as fast as the lounge area, was slowly creeping up to the level of her neck.

"Chief, we have to get in there," Danielle said.

The master chief, in much pain and assisted by Virginia, inched his way through the chest-high water to look for himself through the porthole into the next section.

"Okay, the hatch on the far side of that section is sealed; we'll flood only that area. Go ahead, get her!"

The Frenchwoman pulled up on the handle and the hatch exploded outward. The room flooded immediately and Sarah went under. Danielle swam her way over and reached for the young second lieutenant. Her hand came into contact with Sarah's hair and she pulled. Then Danielle pulled Sarah free of the aft section and dragged her into the lounge.

Jenks yelled for Virginia and Ellenshaw to get him to the cockpit.

"What about the rest of them?" Virginia asked.

"They're dead, Doctor, can't you see that? Now move or we're going to go down. Look at the list!"

As Virginia followed his eyes, she could see that Teacher was leaning at least forty degrees to port. That sight was enough to start her pulling the master chief forward toward the sealed hatch that led into communications.

As Danielle reached the lounge area, holding the young woman under the arms as she treaded water, she saw Sarah's chest rise and fall more rapidly as she started to awaken. At that moment, the hull section split along the area already heavily damaged by the explosion. Danielle was pelted by sharp-edged pieces as the creature breached the hull and came up through the neck-high water. She screamed. Virginia, Ellenshaw, and Jenks turned just as the beast reached for Danielle and Sarah. Danielle kicked out at the creature but lost her hold on Sarah as she did so. She then watched helplessly as the beast took Sarah by one arm and raised her up out of the water. The animal roared, swiping at Danielle and making a grab for her also. The sound was hoarse, but loud enough to shock them all as the overhead light caught its greenish and gold features. Unable to reach Danielle, it took Sarah below the surface of the flood and then out through the split in the hull.

Jenks felt absolutely helpless as Sarah was dragged out. Virginia screamed with rage as she ineffectually shoved the master chief forward with her good arm. Danielle could only stare at the spot where the beast had been only a moment before.

Jack fought his way out of the communications room after quickly tending to the injuries of Stiles. Jackson had been killed when an overhead power box had ripped free of its mountings and struck him in the head, but Stiles was still moaning from an electrical shock that coursed through his body when the radio blew up. His face had been struck by several large pieces of glass and steel.

Jack next made it into the companionway and saw Carl, or at least his legs. The lieutenant commander was struggling, trapped underneath the overturned navigation table. Jack told him to hold still.

"Hurry, Jack, this thing is about to snap both of my legs!"

Jack reached the large table and lifted as much as he could, but one corner had been blown off its mountings and had sunk deep into the deck where water was oozing around the steel frame. Then another loud groaning sound was heard as Teacher suddenly shifted and then listed crazily ten more degrees, making the weight of the table shift just enough for Carl to hurriedly pull his legs free.

"Drop it!" he yelled as he backed his way to the bulkhead.

Jack let go of the heavy table and jumped back quickly onto dry, nonconductive floor as it shorted out when the electronic package hit the puddle of water. Then he began to make his way toward Carl, when he heard pounding coming from the closed hatchway behind him.

"The lounge, Jack. There's people trapped in there!" Carl said as he struggled to his feet by himself. Jack splashed to the door as the incoming water beneath the table rapidly spread.

A woman's hand was pounding at the port glass set inside the aluminum door. Jack saw it was Virginia; on the other side of the door, the water was lapping at her chin. Caught in the crook of her arm was the master chief, just barely keeping his head above the surface.

"Carl, make your way into the cockpit and get ready to slam that door," the major yelled over his shoulder. "I have an idea. Call engineering and see if the engines are still above the waterline."

Carl limped as fast as he could toward the cockpit and tried the intercom on the bulkhead. It started shorting out as soon as he hit the plastic button. On the overhead speakers he could barely make out a shouting voice; he thought it might be Will Mendenhall, but he wasn't sure. Then the intercom shorted out one last time and died. All he knew now was someone was alive back there and hadn't drowned yet. He quickly looked out of the cockpit and saw that the nose of Teacher was starting to rise out of the water.

"Jack, were going down. I don't know if it's the stern or if we have so much flooding amidships that she's bending at her gaskets!"

Jack thought he heard Carl hollering but ignored it as he fought with the latch for the lounge section. Virginia was pushed aside and then the master chief's angry face appeared at the glass. He was shaking his head no and pointing behind Jack, who could barely make out Jenks's voice as he shouted, "Beach her!" The old seaman quickly pointed at the hole the explosion had made and made a swimming motion. Jack finally understood: the survivors in the lounge should escape through the damaged section and swim for it. He grimaced, not liking the plan, but the master chief was right; he wouldn't be able to close the hatch because of the pressure of the water behind it, and, even if he could open it, the cockpit would be flooded and that would ensure that Teacher foundered. He quickly turned away and started for the cockpit.

"You and Ellenshaw swim for the breach, Frenchie," the master chief yelled at Danielle. The professor was having a hard time keeping his head above water, but obeyed. "Okay, sweet cheeks," Jenks winked at Virginia, "I hope you can hold your breath, because this section is now below the surface of the lagoon and she's bending like a fishing pole!"

"I'm not going without you, Jenks," Virginia said, taking a mouthful of water as her reward for speaking.

"You watch too many movies; I'm not the hero type. Follow me, doll," he ordered, as he dove under just as the flooding reached the overhead lights, shorting them out and sending a cascade of sparks over the surface of the undulating water.

Virginia dove with the master chief. She accidentally took in another mouthful of foul-tasting water when she ran into the torn body of Professor Keating. Then she shoved him out of the way and swam, trying desperately to get out of the nightmare she now found herself in.

Jack pushed past Carl, who was leaning heavily on the bulkhead and trying to figure out what Jack was doing.

"What about those people?" Carl yelled, pointing toward the flooded lounge.

"They're going out another way. The chief said for us to beach Teacher before she founders." Jack reached for the start switch and prayed the engine would fire. As he turned it, he heard a soft rumble course through Teacher and he throttled her forward. She was heavy as at least one, maybe two, or even three sections were fully flooded. Then he tried to turn her by using the rudder control on the armrest. Nothing happened; Teacher continued straight on toward the right side of the falls.

"She's not turning!" Jack said frustratedly as he again pulled the hand toggle to the left but Teacher continued going right.

"The main jets must have been damaged; they're frozen in position. We've got to get this thing grounded somewhere, Jack."

The major thought quickly. "The mine! We can get her into the mine and beach her there, it's our only chance!"

"Shit," Carl exclaimed as he rolled into the copilot's chair and quickly buckled his harness. "Go, Jack, go," he yelled as he braced himself against the glass.

Jack pushed the throttle all the way to its stops and Teacher struggled forward, her midsection below water and her aft end sticking up, her water jets and damaged rudder barely beneath the surface. He had a hard time seeing, as the boat was bowing up at both ends. Teacher started to gather forward momentum and Jack felt her start leaning to the right as the water in her flooded sections shifted.

"Oh, shit; can you at least center her with the middle of the falls?" Everett asked as calmly as he could.

"We have no steering at all!"

Jack pulled back the throttles but it was too late. Teacher was under the crushing falls, and the weight and fierceness of the water forced her nose down beneath the foaming tumult. Then they felt the impact as Teacher slammed into the outside wall of the cave opening, tearing the right-side cockpit glass away and sending a ton of water into the bridge, hitting Carl so hard it momentarily stunned him. Suddenly there was a wrenching impact abovedecks as the mainmast was torn out of its mountings. Jack could only pray that there had been no one on or near it. The fall of the tower was heard as it struck the upper deck of the last five sections, ripping a massive gash in the superstructure as the weight of the aluminum tower rocked her from side to side. Then Teacher shot through the falls and into the dark interior of the mine. She immediately rammed the solid rock wall inside the cave, tearing a section fifty feet long along her right side.

Jack felt the engine go, and then the control panel in front of him went with a shower of sparks. Still, by sheer momentum alone, Teacher sped along through the opening, hitting the stone wall again, knocking Jack into the center console. Then he felt the keel strike solid bottom and her nose rose into the air as Teacher hit the first of the stone steps on the right side of the ancient dock. She glanced off at first and then the weight of her flooded sections turned her again, slamming her bottom into the steps. This time her momentum sent her violently up and out of the water. For a moment Jack thought the twenty-one-ton Teacher was going to shoot out over the top of the stone steps and onto the dock, but when she slammed back down she slid backward fifty feet to finally lodge onto the steps with only her stern section in the water.

"Oh, that's going to leave a mark," Carl said as he removed his harness.

Jack sat back to catch his breath; as he did, he felt a cool draft coming through the torn window frames on the right side.

"The chief and navy can take it out of my check," he said as he reached down and unbuckled his seat harness. "Come on, Commander Everett; let's see how many people I killed with my driving."

Farbeaux had just entered the falls when he heard the two explosions underwater. He dove deep until the water had calmed, and then he surfaced. Now he, Mendez, and the Colombian's fourteen men watched from above as the American boat came to rest on the steps that led from the canal at a point just beneath the mammoth statue. He gritted his teeth and knew exactly what had happened.

"When your man Rosolo arrives, I am going to kill him," he said as he slowly brought up a nine-millimeter pistol and pointed it at Mendez.

His men saw this and brought up their own weapons.

"Please, please," Mendez said, holding his hands out from both sides of his rotund body. "There is no need for this. If my man Rosolo did this thing, you can have him, but we can only fail to do what we came here for if we can't think clearly," he lied. He turned to his men, "Lower your weapons. That is an order."

Farbeaux kept his pistol up. "You cannot tell me he acted without orders from his master."

"I believe killing them would have to have been done eventually. But I did not order it at this time. Besides, the Americans are finished; they will now be far too busy just surviving to interfere with us."

Farbeaux saw from their high vantage point that the American boat still had some power. He holstered his handgun and then reached down and picked up a small satchel, angrily kicking his wetsuit against his rebreathing unit.

"Follow me, and keep strict noise discipline until we are well within this upper shaft. No flashlights until I say so. I have to discover if we need to go down into the mine, or up."

As Farbeaux turned his back, Mendez sneered and then waved his men forward. Rosolo would have to find them on his own. But then again, if Mendez knew his man, he would finish the job he had started, possibly before he met up with them again.

For now, El Dorado waited and Mendez could not wait for his just rewards.

20

Ryan took the offered phone from one of the Delta operatives who were now assigned as security for Operation Spoiled Sport.

"This is Ryan."

"Lieutenant, we've had a major problem with the expedition; they no longer appear to be in the lagoon. Boris and Natasha is picking up an empty space where Teacher had been. She also picked out those fifty-plus men making their way past the rapids. It looks like they intend to enter the lagoon. Listen, Mr. Ryan, Jack did manage to get the heat emitters placed before this happened, so you will have an illuminated target area. Is your team ready to deploy?" Niles asked.

"Sir, we really should consider sending our team in on the ground. There's glitch after glitch with this billion-dollar boondoggle."

"Get it to work, Ryan. The president says absolutely no ground incursion, so it's Spoiled Sport or nothing. We have got to keep this unknown ground element off their back."

"Yes, sir," he replied.

"Now look, CIA has confirmed that there are no Peruvian or Brazilian units out there, so they have to be bad guys headed their way. Zap 'em, Mr. Ryan, you hear me? Protect our people. Get in the air!" Niles hung up.

Ryan handed the phone back and looked at the Delta sergeant. And then he jumped when he heard an alarm sound. Two men ran up the stairway and into the converted 747, carrying fire extinguishers.

"Goddammit, what now?" he asked as smoke started billowing out of the large double doorway of the aircraft.

Niles sat at his desk and rubbed his temples. He removed his glasses and then slammed his hand on the table.

"Are you sure you heard an explosion just before communications were lost?" Pete Golding asked.

Niles didn't look up. He just nodded, not caring to use his voice. He took a deep breath and shoved the still picture of the giant statue and its graffito-marked belly toward Pete, whose eyes widened.

"This whole thing is a hoax?" "Pete, we need Europa to do some digging, and I mean dig. Someone knows about Padilla's lagoon, and I want to know who lied to us and why. Can you help me?"

Pete studied the photo from Teacher once again and then something clicked in his mind about the familiar caption on the cartoon that everyone who had looked at the still had missed. He looked up. "Yeah, I can help."

"I have a man flying out to interview the lone survivor of the 1942 expedition. He should be able to at least tell us what it was they were after out there."

"Then let's get to it; we can cover a lot of ground until he checks in."

Niles jumped at the chance to be doing something, anything. But the feeling remained that an ancient trap had been set, and that Jack and the others had walked right into it.

Teacher was sitting high on the stone steps. Her flooded compartments were draining due to the fifty-degree lean to her port side as she had come to rest on the staircase. The towering statue loomed above the diminutive boat that lay broken at its feet.

The major crawled out of the cockpit through the broken windowframe and then helped Carl through. They climbed slowly down the nose and slid to the stone beneath. Jack turned on his flashlight and shined it around. Carl did the same as they hurried back toward the stern. Their light was seemingly absorbed by the blackness surrounding Teacher. As they looked around, an unfamiliar rustling noise sounded from what seemed a great distance, and could be heard even over the waterfall that fell in the center of the pyramid.

"What's that?" Everett asked as he shined his flashlight into the air.

"Uh-oh," Jack said.

Suddenly the air was alive around them. Giant bats had decided the intrusion of noise and vibration Teacher had made was quite enough. They swarmed like angry bees as they circled Jack and Carl, who dove for their lives, hitting the wet steps and covering their heads as bats grazed them in their frenzy. If just one of the large animals struck them solidly, it would have been bone crushing. Then as suddenly as the raid had started, the bats were gone.

"I can live without that!" Carl said as he stood up again. "Where did they go," he said as he shined his flashlight upward once more.

"The falls, I guess. There must be another opening up there that comes out through the river that creates the falls. Come on; let's get our people out of Teacher."

When Jack shined his light into the communications section, he saw that Stiles was on his feet, trying to revive the clearly unrevivable Jackson. He shook his head and moved on silently. Carl flashed his own light on the glass and looked in and cursed when he saw the dead navy man. He then followed Jack down the row of windows. No one appeared to be in the navigation section, as they suspected there wouldn't be. Then they came to the lounge. Their lights immediately picked out three bodies floating in the waist-high water. Jack recognized Keating immediately. He was floating faceup and was actually in a slow spin as the water drained from the damaged section. By the looks of his body he had been caught dead center of the explosion; his right arm was missing, and half of his head. Jack moved the light and saw that Dr. Waltrip was lying crumpled on top of Sergeant Larry Ito, who looked as if he had tried to shield her. But the explosion had killed them both. Jack swallowed hard when he didn't see Sarah. He hoped she was with the master chief and others who had made it out.

Carl looked inside the lounge and cried out when he saw the bodies. He shined the light around, hoping to see someone else, or someone breathing.

"We're one hell of a rescue team, Jack."

The major didn't respond. His light was now trained on the opening of the mine. The water churned and rolled in the violence of the falls, and in that maelstrom of foam he saw no one. The survivors from Teacher were alone and in the dark.

Sarah awoke and immediately started choking. She fought her way back through a dark unconsciousness that threatened to overwhelm her just like an induced coma. She rolled over and threw up a stomachful of water, then heaved and then vomited more foul-tasting fluid. She tried to push herself up from the overly hot and wet floor but fell back down. She knew she was hurt somewhere but couldn't for the life of her think straight enough to find out where. Then she pushed up again and collapsed, screaming in pain, when she realized her right wrist was broken. It was then that she thought clearly enough to remember it hadn't been broken in the initial violence of whatever it was that had happened in the boat; it had snapped as she was being pulled down through the water.

She used her other hand to push herself up off the hot stone. As she peered around in the darkness she could barely make out long, hot wisps of steam coming through the stone floor and the walls. Some strange luminescence was also emanating from those walls, providing enough light that she could see her hand as she held it up, almost as if she were viewing things through the green-tinted lense of a night scope. She brought her wrist closer to her face; the damaged section was already swelling. It was broken, all right.

Then she noticed she could hear running water and smell fresh vegetation. Then she heard a hoarse growl. She shot back against a wall using her ass and good hand, the fingers of which touched an object not made of stone. She grasped it; it was a pole of some kind. But as she tried to use leverage against it to stand, it started to tilt off balance. She let go but too late, the pole crashed to the ground with a loud clang and the sound of breaking glass. She looked down and did a double take. Unless Padilla was centuries ahead of his time, someone had indeed beaten even Helen Zachary to El Dorado. Lying at her feet was a light stand. Old, rusty, and three legged, with six high-powered lamps. Her eyes followed a power cord to another stand, this one upright. The cord led from that to still another.

"What the…?" she mumbled as she saw in the unnatural green light that there were six stands in all. They had been arranged in a semicircle facing inward from the ninety-foot perimeter they had been placed in. Now the graffito picked up by the camera on Snoopy 3 was starting to make sense.

Sarah glanced around her but could see no generator that the light stands had been connected to. She followed one thick cable to a wall, and from there to an opening that was about seven feet in diameter. It looked as if it had been burrowed out of solid rock. She tentatively reached out with her foot and touched a raised step, then another and another. She slowly backed down the several steps she had taken, not knowing if she wanted to head that way in the darkness. At least here she had that strange phosphorescence to see by. Curious, she ran her hand along the wall and then brought it to her face. Her fingers were covered in some sort of natural tritium. Her entire hand glowed softly as she quickly wiped it on her pant leg.

"What in the hell is going on here?" she blurted out.

She looked closer and could see that the glowing particles were actually ancient writings of some kind; indeed, the whole wall was imbedded with the mineral but only parts of it were carved, creating a relief. Possibly an ancient people had spelled out their history. She wondered if the writings were Incan.

Her eyes caught on a darker object that had been stuck into one wall. As she approached she could see that it was a torch. She felt it and determined that it was made of some kind of metal, a rough iron perhaps. She tried to pull it free of its mounting but it was stuck with hundreds of years of grime. She doubled her efforts. As it finally came loose she almost lost her balance with the sudden change of momentum. Some sort of fuel substance was still embedded in its end. She felt in her pockets and found the lighter she always carried for the one chance, she had always joked, where she might find herself deep in an underground cave with no flashlight. She used her thumb to bring the lighter to life and she raised it to the tip of the old iron torch. It flamed to life. She held the torch away from her and examined her surroundings more fully.

All around her were strange images and hieroglyphs. Drawings of animals lined the walls, and images of small people. She could see the people were in chains as they toiled, bearing heavy loads on their heads and shoulders, while Incan taskmasters stood by with menacing whips and clubs. Far more menacing were the skulls. They lined the entire chamber at about head height. There were at least a thousand that had been inlaid into the solid rock. The torchlight also revealed stone slabs, like bunks, covering the floor. The cavern held room upon room with large seating areas. Around her, ancient chains lined the walls, most broken but a few looking as if they had been used only yesterday. Sarah picked out evidence of fire pits, long dead, in the center of the cavern, lining a deep grotto. The ancient stone flooring was worn smooth by the countless footsteps of slaves long dead.

Sarah moved the torch around, following the long history along the walls of what had to have been the Sincaro Indians and their Peruvian slave masters. Some images depicted load upon load of gold being mined from this site. Others were pictographs of strange green minerals being pulled from the depths of giant pits. She was studying one such rendering when a burst of steam erupted from the wall twenty feet to her right. She leaned down and felt the wet floor, and was amazed at how hot it was. She pulled her hand back and then touched the floor again, this time lightly. She knew then that, indeed, there was underground seismic activity here. That explained the difference in water temperature the deeper into the lagoon one went.

She held the torch up once again to examine the walls. There were depictions of many of the creatures she had seen in the diving bell. They stood like guards before the images of small men and women. These must be the Sincaro, she thought as she lightly touched one of the reliefs.

A clear picture was emerging: The beasts were trained in these lower levels to watch and feed the Sincaro. Whatever was mined here was too dangerous for the Inca to supervise. So they trained these beasts to be the Sincaro's overseers.

Sarah turned her attention to the skulls lining the walls. Not only were they small, presumably of the Sincaro, but there were also larger bones and skulls belonging to the strange creatures. So the fate of the overseers was the same as slave. Death.

Turning from the wall, she shined the torch along the center canal. It, too, was carved from the stone and looked to be twenty or thirty feet deep. Sarah suspected that these canals ran from the top of the pyramid, originating from the river that fed the interior falls, all the way through from level to level, transporting the ore from one level to another. She even saw crumbling block and tackle used to fight the gravity of the canal as ore was shipped up, indicating that she was in the very deepest part of El Dorado. The whole mine must have been inundated with these canals. It was the most ingenious method of moving ore from place to place that she had ever heard of.

Something grunted in the darkness beside the moving water and Sarah held up the torch in that direction. Her eyes widened when she saw the large creature rise from the man-made canal and swim easily into the large grotto that took up the entire center of the huge cave. It came to shallow water and stood, fully eight feet tall. The large, powerful-looking arms were laid easily at its side.

Sarah swallowed and looked up at the creature. She remembered its huge black eyes from the diving bell incident. She winced as she moved her broken wrist and then a memory returned.

"You pulled me out of the boat, didn't you?"

The beast moved its legs as it shifted weight from one leg to the other. Its gills on either side of it jawline moved in and out as its mouth opened and closed, obviously trying to breathe in enough air to have strength on land. She realized that although the creature was amphibious at the very least, its underdeveloped lungs must not be capable of sustaining it for long periods out of the water.

"Wouldn't Ellenshaw love to get a look at you? I think he would crap himself," she muttered.

Viewing the animal close up, without the color-deluding dark waters of the lagoon interfering, she could see that it was really just an enormous mutation of a freshwater cichlid, a mild-mannered species one could buy in any aquarium-supplies store in the States.

Sarah studied the swaying creature as it studied her, more than just intrigued, but that still didn't mean that this magnificent being didn't scare the hell out of her.

The beast barked hoarsely twice and then slowly began to move off toward the deeper water. Trusting it not to attack her, Sarah turned back to the pictures that seemed to glow against the light, and reexamined the ancient drawings. She looked closely at the mineral that the creatures brought from deep in the mine and wondered what it was. Emeralds, maybe? She held the torch closer to the wall and saw the spot that depicted the area where the dead were placed. She saw that both Sincaro and the creatures were buried side by side, as if they were equals in their misery and finally their deaths.

"Bastards," she said under her breath as she thought about the riches the Inca had brought out of here on the labor and pain of others.

Sarah turned away and saw the bubbles of the beast's underwater retreat from the chamber.

"I'm not a slave and you're not going to keep me here," she called as she turned toward the opening with the steps.

She suddenly stopped, as she thought she heard a gasp and then a sigh. She turned to trace the sound to its source. It came from the far wall. She held up the torch and could make out a small opening at the base of the excavated chamber. The light revealed discarded fish bones and rotted things strewn about the floor of the cave. Then she saw what she thought was a flick of fire emanating from one of the larger of the small caves. The light seemed to be coming from behind what looked like fabric of some sort.

Sarah grimaced at the smell coming from the wall of cave openings. She raised her damp shirt up to cover her nose and mouth, and walked toward the largest of the rooms. She slowly and carefully pulled the rotted flap of animal skin aside and leaned in, holding out the torch before her. Her eyes widened. There, lying and sitting around a natural pool of magma boiling in a small caldera that smelled strongly of sulphur, were the tattered remains of the Zachary expedition.

"Oh my god," said Sarah.

Farbeux stopped the men as the shaft started to spiral at a much steeper angle. He held up his light and shined it along the hot and sweating walls. Then he focused it on Mendez, who stood there breathing heavy. His men were just as sweaty and out of breath. They had been moving for only twenty minutes when they stopped for the first time.

"Tell me, are you tired, senor?" Farbeaux asked, smiling.

"Tired, hot, and beginning to believe that there is nothing more than old statues in this mine," Mendez answered angrily.

"Then maybe you wouldn't be interested in this," he said as he shined his large flashlight toward a three-inch vein of gold that streaked like a lightning bolt through the wet stone of the shaft.

Mendez's eyes widened as he dropped his small pack and ran toward the vein. He rubbed it with his fingers lovingly. His men, too, immediately totally lost any fatigue they had shown earlier.

Farbeaux lifted his small satchel and quickly noted the reading on the small device he had inside. He smiled and looked up.

"Now, you can be satisfied with this small deposit, or we can go to the place were El Dorado really begins."

Mendez beamed, totally rejuvenated. He reached down, removed his canteen from his belt, and swallowed some water.

"Lead the way, my friend. Where you go, we will follow."

21

Once again Niles was in a clean suit alongside Pete Golding in the clean room where the mainframe for the Cray supercomputer Europa was housed. They had been searching U.S. Army and Corps of Engineer databases for the past hour, hitting dead end after dead end.

"Gold — the army wouldn't have been after gold with World War Two breaking out all over the globe; it just doesn't add up. So what else would send a specialist team down there?" Pete asked, leaning back in his chair and stretching.

"I agree, to expend time and effort, and using the military and OSS to save gold prospectors — I just don't buy it. Not with the way the war was going in 1942; we were still losing, remember?"

"Okay, so let's try to go through the back door. The senator said he had no names for the people the OSS pulled out in 1942, right? But he did say where they were from: Chicago and Princeton. Let's start there."

Niles leaned forward. "Okay, Pete, go ahead." "Europa, query. In the war years 1940 through 1942, was there any American university-sponsored expeditions to Brazil or the Amazon Basin?"

Formulating, said the female voice of Europa, then as quickly, During years 1940 to '42, there was no American scholastic sponsorship of any South American excursions.

"Great start," Pete said.

Niles shook his head but continued the line of questioning. "Europa, query. Were there any missing persons reports on University of Chicago or Princeton filed in those same years? Correction; expand search to 1945."

Formulating, she said as she started to penetrate the security of not only university records but those of police departments and federal agencies throughout the nation.

Twenty-two records of missing persons reported from both universities during target years. Twenty-one were later reported as solved. One remained open, filed at Princeton, June 1945.

"Too late for filing," Niles said.

Both men sat and thought. They were at a brick wall and they didn't know how to penetrate it.

Europa has detected a pattern in your queries. Query: Do your current search parameters include accidental death of university personnel on foreign territory?

Niles looked at Pete. The Cray was designed to interact with its operators and advise if there might have been something overlooked in the search they were conducting.

"It does now, thanks to you, Europa. Continue please," Pete said.

In calendar year 1942, a chartered aircraft leased by the University of Chicago was reported missing in the Brazilian rain forest south of the Amazon River. There were two University of Chicago survivors and one reported survivor from Princeton University.

"Wait a minute; didn't you say there were no university-sponsored expeditions in Brazil during those years?" Pete asked.

The incident upon which the report was filed was not a university-sponsored action.

"Come on, who sponsored it?" Niles asked, losing patience.

Pete looked at Niles as if he had lost his mind. "Name the sponsor, Europa," Pete commanded, still looking at Niles.

The aircraft in question was leased through the United States Army Air Corps and geographical survey sponsored by the U.S. Army and U.S. Army Corp ofEngineers.

"What in the hell is this?" Pete asked.

Europa does not understand the question.

"Not you. Niles?"

"Query. Can Europa identify the departments involved in this charter at the University of Chicago?" Niles asked.

Formulating, she said.

Niles stood as something distant and forgotten started to flirt with his memory.

The University of Chicago Department of Physics and Theoretical Sciences at Princeton University, Europa answered quickly.

Niles realized what picture was starting to form from the puzzle pieces being laid before him. And now the past came flooding back to him as Europa started putting the pieces of that puzzle together — something he did not want to think about. He rubbed his hands across his face in vexation but continued his line of questioning nonetheless.

"Query. Who were the heads of these departments at the two universities from UAO through 1942?"

Chairperson for the University of Chicago's Department of Sciences and Physics for years in question was Professor Enrico Fermi. Director of Theoretical Sciences, Princeton University, and departmental chairperson for years in question was Professor Albert Einstein."

"What have I done?" Niles asked.

"What are you saying here, Niles?" Pete asked while looking incredulously at the printed names.

"I may have killed everyone on that rescue mission, Pete."

On the screen, spelled out in big blue letters, was Europa's answer to the mystery of Padilla's lost expedition: enrico fermi and albert einstein.