Legend

22

It took thirty minutes to pry Mendenhall and Sanchez out of the engine room. They found the body of Lebowitz pinned underneath the mainmast where it had crashed onto the deck. Professor Ellenshaw had been trapped beneath one of the bunks in section six and it had taken a hacksaw to free him. Heidi Rodriguez had a nasty wound on her forehead and they had thought she wouldn't wake up until she suddenly sat straight up and screamed that she was drowning. She had been found in section seven under an overturned stainless-steel table amid broken beakers and tech equipment. The bright floodlights from what remained of the deck lights lit the opening and surrounding dock and stairs that Teacher sat upon.

There was no sign of Jenks or Virginia. Danielle and Ellenshaw had shown up after they had freed the engineering section, and said they had been separated from the other two. Ellenshaw excitedly explained how Danielle had saved his life and almost killed him at the same time, by making him dive deep beneath the falls to keep from being crushed.

Danielle was now wrapping Heidi's forehead with gauze from sickbay and talking softly to her. Jack took stock of the many bodies they had pulled out of the lounge and science sections, twenty-four in all. Ellenshaw's two young assistants were lined up on the dock along with five of the Group's security people, including Shaw and Jackson. Carl came up behind Jack and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Jack, I checked the holes that were punched into us. Two separate charges, definitely explosive devices. We have scorching on the hull and it was bent inward. I would say a three- or four-pound charge, the same with the engineering section."

The major continued to stare at the covered bodies and didn't answer at first. Carl was about to speak again when they were approached by Danielle.

"I hope Sarah is safe," she said.

Jack turned on her, his gaze demanding to know what she knew.

"Major, the beast took her when our section was flooded. She and I both were grabbed. I struggled free, but Sarah didn't. I'm sorry."

"Why would the animal come into the ship?"

"This may sound strange to you, but I had the distinct feeling it was trying to help Sarah and me; don't ask me why, it's just a intuition." She turned away.

"Jack, are you all right?" Carl asked, rubbing his bruised legs.

"Will," Jack called out, ignoring the question.

"Yes, Major," Mendenhall answered from where he was helping to tend the wounds of Ellenshaw and Stiles.

Jack walked over to one of the glass windows that now had a crazy line of cracks through it. Using a flashlight, he smashed out the remaining glass. He reached in and pulled out two handheld radios from the communications compartment, and quickly checked the settings and charge. He tossed one to Mendenhall.

"I have a job for you, and it's damned well dangerous."

Mendenhall looked from Jack to Carl and smiled. "Yes, sir."

Jack just nodded, never more proud of the man he had sworn to make an officer, then a thought struck him. "Staff Sergeant Mendenhall, you are hereby promoted to the temporary rank of second lieutenant, United States Army, as witnessed this day by—"

"Lieutenant Commander Carl A. Everett, United States Navy," Carl said in all seriousness.

"And based upon pending approval and recommendation of the director of Department Fifty-six fifty-six, Dr. Niles Compton, you are hereby notified of said field promotion. Is that understood, Lieutenant Mendenhall?"

Mendenhall frowned. "Yes, sir, understood. Now, you've given me the sugar, so I guess I'm ready for the medicine."

Jack took Mendenhall by the shoulder and steered him away from the others.

"Look, Will, I need you to go out there and get to high ground. That means finding some way out of the lagoon, and climbing out and up beside the falls. I don't know if the radio will reach me in here but, once in position, you are to watch the lagoon. Dig up a set of night-vision goggles and report on secure channel seventy-eight; you'll be speaking with a mutual friend of ours who's call sign is Night Rider One and your call sign is Conquistador. You are to tell him that Operation Spoiled Sport is on and to fire at will, if and when you see an armed element reach the lagoon, either on land or by boat. We hope it's by boat. You tell Night Rider to execute, execute, execute. Three times, you got that, Will?"

"Yes sir, three times, and then what?"

"And then what? Get your ass behind a big rock and hope that Mr. Ryan's burned-up body doesn't land in your lap."

Mendenhall just looked at the major.

"Seriously, if Operation Spoiled Sport works, you stay down until you know it's safe, and, believe me, you'll know when that is."

"Major, who are these men coming?"

"We have to assume they're bad guys. Boris and Natasha picked them up yesterday, heading our way. They're heavily armed, and Niles and the president can't account for 'em."

"Yes, sir, I'll do my best."

"Good luck, Lieutenant."

The major was joined by Carl, as they watched their new officer load his radio into a large plastic bag and stuff it in his shirt.

"All right, Commander Everett, let's get ready and see if we can find anyone alive in here."

Sarah was just entering the small cave when the sound of splashing water sounded behind her, and she quickly backed out in time to see first Virginia, then Jenks, as they were lifted out of the water by the creature. It started walking, dragging the choking and puking duo across the hard rock. It deposited them in front of Sarah, then turned away and walked slowly back to the water, where it disappeared.

Sarah helped Virginia to her feet and hugged her. Then she helped Jenks struggle to one leg before he shook off her assistance and sat back down.

"God, am I glad to see you two," she said, crying. "Come on, Virginia, I've got something to show you."

"Don't worry about me; it's only broken in two places. Ain't shit," Jenks said, looking at his leg.

Virginia ignored the master chief for the moment and followed Sarah to the largest of the cave openings. Sarah pulled back the cover as she again held the torch inside. Virginia immediately rushed inside, careful to avoid the bubbling magma caldera in the center of the room.

"Helen Zachary?" She went to her knees and placed her hand on the burned and scarred face of her old Event Group colleague. "My god, what happened?"

The young man next to her moved and his eyes fluttered open. He reached down to place a hand in the small running creek that coursed through the wall of the cave, and then wiped his face. Then he started to sob, waking up the other nine people that were sleeping along the rough-hewn walls.

"Thank god," he said through his tears.

"What happened, why are you here?" Sarah asked.

"The… creature, it brought us here. It's been…feeding us, keeping us alive."

"What's your name?" Virginia asked.

"Rob, I mean Robert Hanson, I was… am, Professor Zachary's assistant."

"Well, you've done well in keeping your people together," Sarah said.

"Kelly, Kelly, come here," Robby said into the darkness of the cave.

As Sarah watched, a young woman eased forward and sat next to the crying assistant. She smiled at Sarah.

"God, are we happy to see you," she said with tears welling up in her own eyes.

"We have to get her out of here," said Robby.

"We're here to get everyone out," Sarah said.

"You don't understand." He reached out and took Kelly's hand. "This is the daughter of the president."

"What?" Sarah asked loudly, startling all those that had awakened and were inching toward their rescuers to make sure they were real.

"Knock it off, Robby; I'm no more important than anyone else here."

"All right, all right, you can explain this little tale later," said Sarah. "Right now, we plan on getting all of you out."

Meanwhile, Virginia gave Helen a quick examination, not liking what she saw. The professor's face was covered in lesions, and there had been massive hair loss. Her fever was so high that Virginia instinctively pulled her hand away after touching her forehead. There were black marks on her face and neck, and it looked almost as if her left eyelid had melted down over her eye.

"Good god, if I didn't know any better, I would say this is—"

"Radiation poisoning," Robby said as he failed miserably to be as brave as he wanted to be in front of the others and resumed crying softly while touching Helen's hand.

"Radiation poisoning?" Sarah asked.

"The mine is full of uranium, enriched uranium, damned close to extremely hot plutonium. God, her fever is out of control," he said as he felt Helen's forehead for himself.

"These others, are they all right?" Virginia asked.

"Yes, scratches and frightened to death mostly. There are these animals that bring us plenty of fish to eat. But it's as if they were keeping us here for a reason," he sobbed. "At least the smaller one seems to keep the other creature away from us."

"Other creature?" Sarah asked.

"Yeah, this one's big, has no human characteristics like the smaller one. It hates anything that breathes air, the professor thinks." Kelly looked down at Helen. "She thinks the smaller animal is wild, and lives in the lagoon, while the big one was bred from the creatures that worked the mine, worked at bringing the ore up. She thought they were used to keep the slaves in line. Keep them corralled in here. The damn Inca used both the Sincaro and animals to do what they knew they couldn't — mine the hot uranium."

"There is no such element in the natural world as enriched uranium ore; it's an impossibility in the natural order of elements," Virginia said as she checked Helen's pulse. She closed her eyes and thought a moment, trying desperately to make sense out of this highly unusual moment.

"Okay, I admit the elements and the situation would seem to contradict the natural assumption of improbability," she conceded as she reached out and took a palmful of water and spread it on Helen's forehead. "We have uranium ore, heated to an extreme temperature by the seismic activity of the caldera… and remember, Sarah, we picked up unusually high concentrations of fluorides in the water of the lagoon, obviously released through the clay or other soil in this valley; thus, it is possible to breed that ore into—"

"Weapons-grade plutonium, free for the taking," Sarah finished for her, remembering the light stands in the cave behind her and the graffito on the belly of Supay. "Jesus, everyone who entered this level of the mine is contaminated. If we don't get out of here soon, especially them," she nodded toward Rob and the others, "we're all screwed."

"That's just about what the professor thought," Kelly said, locking eyes with Sarah.

Jack and the others began hurriedly removing supplies from Teacher because she would never see the water again without Jenks here to supervise her much-needed repairs. She was too unsteady on the stone steps to delay in getting the supplies out.

Although they were eager to get moving into El Dorado to look for survivors, Jack and Carl set up some makeshift lighting on the massive dock the Inca had carved out of solid stone. The wonders it revealed were beyond belief. All the Incan gods were represented along the high walls and many columns. The tunnels and shafts were stacked one upon the other in a never-ending spiral heading toward the top of a giant indoor falls that cascaded toward the floor in the center of the great mine, its spray keeping the interior of the mine constantly damp. The pillars that lined each level were carved from solid rock. How many hundreds of years, or possibly thousands this shaft had taken to be excavated boggled their minds.

As they ventured deeper into the vast expanse of the pavilion and beyond the powerful lights and into shadow, they saw crate upon crate of stacked K rations, fuel drums, crated equipment, and other supplies. Each wooden crate was stenciled in black lettering.

"United States Army."

Jack looked at Carl and raised his eyebrows. "Look at this."

Arrayed against the stone outer wall of the main chamber were what looked like graves. Heavy stones were laid layer upon layer, creating a large bulge in the stone floor. There were twenty-three in all. Jutting stone markers protruded from the rocks at the head of each. On each was looped a small chain and on each chain was a single dogtag. Jack raised one and shined a light on it.

"Technical Sergeant Royce H. Peavey."

"Well, I guess that explains who the Kilroy artists were. But what in the hell were they doing here, Jack?"

"This whole damn thing smells to high heaven. But we can't speculate here; we have to get moving." Jack took a last look at a group of Americans that had come pretty far to be left in a horrible place.

"I figure we start at the bottom of the mine first and then work our way up," Carl said as he turned away from the seventy-year-old cache of military supplies and the men they were meant to feed.

"The canals?" Jack asked, as he started following Carl back to the smashed Teacher.

"I figure we can scrape up the scuba gear we need if you're game, ground pounder."

"You're on, Commander Everett, after you."

"You think Sarah is still alive?"

"I do, and I'm betting Jenks and Virginia are also."

Carl glanced back toward the long-lost graves.

"Good thing you have the navy here, Jack; from the looks of it, you army types didn't fare too well around here in the past."

Farbeaux halted the group when he heard voices. He cocked his head to the right and then listened again. Nothing but silence greeted him as he hushed the men behind him. It had been over an hour since he had started the group down a steep slope in the tunnels. Farbeaux had figured the ramp used to be a slide of some sort that had been possibly used for removing slag and other unwanted material from the mine. The ramp, as steep as it was, connected with almost every sublevel as it coursed down through the mine.

Mendez and his men were really starting to grumble as they had passed vein after vein of gold, each deposit larger and wider than the one before it. He knew each of the fools, including Mendez himself, had taken their own samples and pocketed them.

Farbeaux saw their bulging pockets in his night-vision goggles and smiled, then brought out his satchel again to take another reading. The men behind him didn't notice what he was doing because of their avarice. They were intent on picking up as much of the gold ore as possible.

He turned the machine off and then removed his goggles. He shocked the men behind by turning on a broad-beam lamp and shining the light on a very wide and very green-looking vein of ore that ran side by side with another of gold. He turned the miniature Geiger counter back on again, held out a probe, and the machine went crazy. It emitted what sounded like the clicking of a cricket. Farbeaux closed his eyes and then shut off the machine once again. He had found what he had come for deep inside the mine. After years of waiting and receiving the ore samples from his man at the Vatican, the chase and search for the diary of Padilla, suddenly now the lode was here, ready to be torn from the earth and sold to the highest bidder.

"What was that instrument you were just using, senor?" Mendez asked as he wiped sweat from his brow with a filthy handkerchief.

"This?" Farbeaux held up his satchel. "Well, let's say it's pointing me to the richest find of all, something you wouldn't be interested in. But I will explain shortly; right now, let's find that which excites you my friend, your gold."

"But we have found enough gold to last a lifetime just on this winding ramp you discovered. Why even proceed further?"

"My friend, you can stuff your pockets until the very weight crushes your bones, or you can follow me into the lowest reaches and find it already mined, smelted, and possibly even stacked for you, ready to be shipped out. But I leave it to you — take what you have now and wait months while you try to get more equipment in here to mine the gold and possibly watch the Brazilian government take it before you have a chance to steal it, or you can follow me and find it all ready to take out. My way, you will at least have what you can ship out now. Not what you can stuff in your pockets." He looked again at the meandering ramp, then faced Mendez again. "Which looks quite ridiculous, by the way."

Mendez didn't know how to react to the mild rebuke. He was beginning to hate the Frenchman. Farbeaux's attitude since entering the mine had changed; it was as if he had received what he had sought and now treated his benefactor with disdain. As he emptied his pockets of the gold he had collected, Mendez watched Farbeaux continue down the steep refuse ramp. He would see to it that the man learned respect for him, as had many who had crossed him did in the past.

Farbeaux found the exit he wanted from the refuse ramp. The reading of his counter was almost pegged in the red. The ore was strongest down a wide hall that was marked by two columns, indicating an entryway into a broad corridor. The twin columns had the same carvings of the strange creatures that had marked those at the tributary's entrance, but these gods were depicted in a squatting posture, as their massive arms and legs held up the top of the stone frame that guarded the entrance into the actual passageway used to remove the gold and other ores from the lowest levels.

The group continued down into the great shaft past the ancient trail as laid down by the Sincaro as they labored among whip lashes to bring the Inca their treasure. The canal running the length of the shaft had obviously been used to carry small boats attached by ropes, and used as an ancient conveying system. The men even found remnants of the small boats in areas of the excavation from shaft to shaft, very ingenious for the ancient time and efficient in their way.

One room just inside the stone entry that had been dug into the side of the shaft smelled of danger. Farbeaux shined his light inside and saw that the room held a small deposit of white sacks. One sack had disintegrated over the years and had fallen to the stone floor and broken open. The gold dust was unmistakable in the light as it gleamed and sparkled. He looked around the room and saw what appeared to be a fulcrum release. He also noticed small holes that lined the doorway which were currently dripping water. It was extremely hot in there. He once again shined the light on the lever, a small handle that jutted from the wall just inside the room, within arm's length of the doorway.

"Have your men stay clear of this room," he said, turning to face Mendez.

"I see what's in there, senor. This is exactly the find we are here to exploit," the Colombian challenged the Frenchman. "Jesus, Hucha, proceed inside and retrieve one of those bags for me," he ordered.

Farbeaux stepped aside. "You have been warned, senor."

Two men in the center of the long line stepped up to the doorway. Jesus stepped though tentatively and while Farbeaux watched, silently his left foot hit the false floor directly in front of the doorway as his companion followed him through. The stone at his foot slid down only a half an inch, barely perceptible even to Farbeaux who knew what to look for. The rectangle of stone settling into the floor triggered a small bronze pipe inside the thick tile. Small stone caps burst free from the doorway and several other spots inside the carved-out room with a loud pop, making everyone in the tunnel outside flinch at the gunshot-type reports. Jesus and Hucha were suddenly caught in a steaming-hot shower of water that must have run straight up through the magma chamber buried deeply inside the pyramid. They instantly fell to the stone floor, screaming and writhing. They rolled, but everywhere they tried to escape the roaring, searing steam, it found them from the many ancient nozzles inside. Farbeaux finally reached inside as his point was made about following his orders, and pulled down on the fulcrum release. The steam dwindled almost immediately to nothing.

"You knew the room was booby-trapped?" Mendez said accusingly.

"Yes, that was why I said for no one to enter."

Jesus and Hucha were dead. One of the bodies didn't seem to believe it, as yet it rolled over on its back, leaving the man's face sticking to the floor. Their boots were melted off, and in several areas bone protruded from clothing.

"You have gone too far, you should have said something!"

"I did, I said 'do not enter this room.' " The Frenchman looked down the line of Mendez's men. "Please do as instructed and you will not end up like your compatriots. There are many pitfalls here that can and will kill you in many horrible ways." Farbeaux glanced into the room at the now red and fleshless bodies; only their clothing had survived the liquid inferno that had engulfed them. "I believe seeing is the best teacher we can have. You have seen, now follow instructions," he said coldly as he turned and continued down the trail.

The Colombians didn't say a word because they could all still smell the boiled skin.

Mendez watched as Farbeaux stopped and studied the deep canal for a moment. He was very weary of the imperious way this man was acting within the mine. He was doubly worried because Rosolo had not caught up with them. He waved his men forward, not taking his eyes from the Frenchman.

Jack followed the more experienced Carl into the canal and out through the falls, looking around wildly for any sign of the animal that took Sarah. They followed the wall for almost sixty feet, started looking for a way in. They knew Sarah had detected several openings using the diving bell's sonar track. Jack almost ran straight into Carl when he stopped suddenly. There, just a few feet ahead in the black water, Carl's light was illuminating the creature. It was holding station in the lagoon by swirling its webbed hands in the water and lightly kicking with its feet. The dark eyes studied them for a moment and then it suddenly turned and sped off toward the wall. Jack grabbed Carl and pointed to where the beast had vanished into a small opening in the rock. They started kicking with their fins and made for the spot the animal had vanished into.

Unbeknownst to them both, another set of eyes had watched the creature and the officers as they made for the lower opening of the mine.

Captain Rosolo, having survived the attack by the very beast he had watched a moment before, turned and kicked in the opposite direction. Since the twin explosions of his limpet mines, he had taken his time to study the underwater layout of the lagoon. Now that he was finishing, he had become aware of company in the water and had watched as two of the Americans entered the lagoon from the falls.

Now he swam for the opening of El Dorado. He figured it was time to take out an insurance policy against both the American group and the Frenchman, which he would deliver with extreme delight.

Helen Zachary awakened and tried to open her eyes, but they were sealed shut with infection; additionally, her left eye was seared closed because of the extreme nature of the ore she had handled.

Jenks was having his leg tended to by three of the young women from the expedition who were happy just to be doing anything at all. The master chief kept smiling and reassuring the girls that others were there and undoubtedly looking for them, even through the horrible pain as they tried clumsily to set his leg. Every once in a while he would take a deep breath against the excruciating waves their touch produced, and then he would look up and wink at Virginia, who was proud of the way he tried to reassure all of them in the cave.

"That man, Kennedy," Robby babbled and cried, "he came here because someone wanted him to make sure nothing like that ore was brought out of here. But it was he who took samples. It was Kennedy's people that set off the dark one, the creature that lives in the pyramid; it attacked his team and then us when we tried to help. I don't know why, but that thing acted as though it was here to stop anything from leaving this mine. I mean the ore; it wasn't concerned with gold, just that damned ore. And then it was Professor Zachary who discovered why. She was actually communicating, well, in a rudimentary way with the smaller one, the one that's hidden us since the other went berserk."

"Why… not, we're… related."

Sarah and Virginia saw Helen was trying to sit up.

"Oh, don't do that, Helen, don't move, you're very sick," Virginia said, placing her hand on Helen's chest and easing her back down.

"Virginia?" she whispered. "Do…you and… still…hate me?"

"Stop that, no one at Group—" She caught herself before she said it. "No one ever hated you, Helen, no one."

A tear slowly trickled from Helen's right eye and forced its way down her swollen cheek. "Niles," she whispered.

"Dear, it was Niles who sent us," Virginia whispered in her ear.

A sad smile came to Helen's features as she lost consciousness.

"What did she mean when she said the creature and us are related?" asked Sarah.

Robby placed a wet cloth on Helen's forehead and then sat back and explained. "Before the dark beast sank the boat and barge out of anger over those guys' taking ore samples, Dr. Zachary ran a complete DNA sequencing on both of the creatures. There was not one difference between them, or us."

"That's impossible. From what I saw, that thing is an amphibian," Virginia challenged.

Robby shrugged. "Doesn't matter what you believe; those animals were once us. The doc said it chose to go back to the water, whereas we chose to stay on land."

"You say she communicated with it?" Sarah asked.

"According to a wall diary of sorts, painted by the Sincaro, which the beast and its kind saved once upon a time from a bleak future, the darker species and its kind used to be slaves alongside the Indians. And they were the only creatures, human or otherwise, who could mine the uranium without becoming sick. The smaller ones, the doc figured, were wild, never tamed by the Inca, that's why they have more tolerance for us than the dark one. The doc said the animals had a natural resistance but not a complete immunity to the ore. It had something to do with total immersion therapy, a natural way to fight radiation sickness. Since the creatures mined the ore underwater, they didn't die as rapidly as us land walkers."

"But what did the Inca need or even want the ore for?" Virginia asked.

"The doc said they used it to heat their giant smelting pots. She says they discovered it was more efficient than trying to use the natural volcanic aspects of the mine. No telling how many people were killed during their reign over this area. Pizarro might have had the right idea; who's to say who screwed who?" he said bitterly. "The Sincaro weren't sad their masters were conquered; I bet those creatures have been a sight happier also."

"How many are there?" Sarah asked, actually concerned.

"Kelly, you were there when the professor transcribed her notes. What did she say about the number of animals?"

Kelly was haggard like the rest but she gave a smile that told Sarah she had a lot of courage. "She said that the animals are a long-lived species, but Helen thinks these two may be the last of their kind. The wild one, the green and gold creature, is very protective of all things in this valley. It saved us from starving to death."

"But what—"

"Any further questions can be asked out here," a deep, French-accented voice said from the cave opening, cutting off the question Virginia was about to ask. "So please, come out quickly, as my associate has stupidly pulled the pin on a hand grenade and is quite prepared to throw it in among you," Farbeaux said as he stared at the stupidity of the move by Mendez.

They all stood with the exception of the injured professor and Jenks, who could only look around in frustration for a weapon.

"These guys aren't with you?" Robby asked as he started to follow the rest from the enclosure.

"No, they're not," Sarah answered.

"Please, senor, find the pin and replace it in the grenade, quickly," Farbeaux ordered, flicking his eyes from the motley group of survivors to the sour countenance of the Colombian.

Mendez scowled as he placed the silver pin back in the grenade. He tossed it back to one of his men and then faced the twelve raggedy people before him.

"Colonel Farbeaux, I take it?" Sarah asked.

"At your service." The Frenchman actually looked pleased for a moment as he took in Sarah. "Ms. McIntire, isn't it? How was Okinawa, my dear? A learning experience, perhaps?" He turned and told several of the men in Spanish to light a few of the torches that lined the wall.

Sarah didn't answer, but she did wonder how this maniac had known she had been to Japan recently, then she thought she knew the answer. In her estimation, it didn't take a brain like Niles Compton's to figure it out.

Farbeaux smiled as he walked past Sarah and Virginia and leaned into the small cave opening. He frowned at the sight of Helen, then he straightened and returned to the group. Mendez and his men had found other torches and the area was alight with illumination that brought out the wall paintings and carvings into stark relief.

"Helen is seriously ill?" he asked.

"She's dying, Colonel, so surely you don't intend to hold us up here. We must get her to a hospital," Virginia said, lowering her hands.

Farbeaux looked from the Americans to Mendez and closed his eyes.

"Please keep your hands in the air, senora," Mendez growled.

"I will not," Virginia stated flatly.

"Do as he says," Jenks hissed from his place just inside the small cave. He was watching through the opening while lying on his side on the cave floor.

"Shut up, Chief, these people have been through too damned much; we're taking them out of here," Virginia announced.

"I'm afraid no one can leave here," Mendez said as he waved his men forward.

Farbeaux reached into his satchel, removed a small bottle, and tossed it to Virginia. She looked at him quizzically.

"Potassium and iodine. It will slow the spread of infection, but I'm afraid by the looks of the professor's condition it will do no good, though no harm, either. She must have received over five thousand rods, a rather massive exposure."

Virginia angrily tossed the pill bottle back to Farbeaux.

"Shove them up your—"

"It's far too late for Professor Zachary," Sarah said, stepping quickly in between Virginia and the Frenchman. "But I'm curious to know why you thought to bring the one pharmaceutical that could help with a lesser exposure, Colonel."

Farbeaux raised his left eyebrow at Sarah and then with the corner of his eye saw Mendez tense up.

"I suppose you wouldn't accept it was a lucky guess, perhaps?"

"Not likely, Colonel."

"I should also like to know why you would take such a medicinal precaution without informing your financier, senor," Mendez said as he pulled a nine-millimeter Beretta from its holster and pointed it at Farbeaux. His men followed suit with their Ingram submachine guns. "Now I insist you tell me why it is you are really here."

The Frenchman was about to respond when he saw the disturbance in the water. The wake was traveling very fast, obviously created by something just beneath the surface of the canal. Mendez saw his eyes flick from himself to something the Colombian could not detect.

The creature was suddenly there. It had exploded out of the water like a shot from a cannon. The first two of Mendez's mercenaries never knew they were being attacked. Being the closest to the grotto, they were taken unawares backward into the roiling waters, as everyone present saw just a spray of water and a fine mist of red swirling where the two men had been only moments before.

Farbeaux didn't hesitate as the mercenaries were snatched from the land of the living in a microsecond. He made a dash for the opening in the far wall that Sarah had discovered earlier. Too late, Mendez saw what Farbeaux was attempting. His slow reaction time seemed even slower in sharp contrast to the quick and violent death of two of his men. He fired wildly at the retreating Frenchman. Three nine-millimeter bullets hit to the right of the opening, missing Farbeaux by mere inches as he disappeared up the steep steps.

Just then, the beast came from the grotto again. A sudden swath of water accompanied the creature as it cleared the grotto wall by six feet, landing inside the circle of gunmen, who began firing. Sarah ignored the noise and gunfire as she seized this opportunity to grab for the Ingram of the man to her left. But just as she thought she would succeed at catching him by surprise, the Colombian sensed her movement and turned toward her.

Jenks tried desperately to maneuver his bad leg. The pain was so intense that he knew he only had a moment to react and help the diminutive army officer. As gunfire erupted only feet away from Mendez and his men as they defended themselves against the maniacal creature in their midst, Master Chief Jenks grabbed his shattered leg with both hands and with a howl lashed out in a sideways kicking motion that caught the armed man beside Sarah by both of his ankles. Jolted by the unexpected blow, the man fired his Ingram, sending rounds into the stone ceiling.

Sarah reacted almost as quickly, slamming her fist into the man's upturned face as he was knocked off balance. He hit the floor right in front of the small cave opening, and Sarah let her forward momentum carry her down on top of him. Jenks was still screaming in pain as the two rolled into him.

As Mendez watched in horror, the beast before him swiped with long powerful arms at his men. Seven-inch claws ripped into their flesh and bone, and the heated air was instantly corrupted with blood and sinew. In shock at what he was witnessing, he blindly turned his Beretta on the bloody scene. He fired twice, hitting one of his men in the back. Then he panicked and ran for the doorway that he had just watched the Frenchman disappear into a moment before. Three of his men quickly followed their boss into the far wall.

Sarah had managed to gain control of the Ingram but the Colombian, merely stunned, was quick to recover from the blow of landing on the stone. As Sarah raised the weapon and tried to gain some semblance of aim from where she lay, another scream and a unlaced boot heel came crashing down into the mercenary's face. Jenks started shaking badly after he had smashed his broken leg once again into the man. He passed out from the pain as Sarah screamed a shout of triumph and rolled free of the unconscious Colombian.

Robby, Kelly, and Virginia were trying their best to get the rest of the students out of harm's way as bullets started flying in every direction from the firing of panicked men. Several rounds found their mark as the beast screamed and roared in pain. But that didn't stop the huge creature as it reached out and grabbed the closest man still standing in its midst. It easily raised him above its head and tossed him like a stuffed doll into four others.

From her position on the ground, Sarah saw one of the men near her had expended his magazine and drawn a large, very lethal-looking machete from a long scabbard and raised it above his head. As it came down, Sarah pulled the trigger. Later she would be grateful for the three-round burst-of-fire setting on the Ingram because in her haste she depressed and held the trigger down. Two of the three rounds caught the man in the back as his machete came crashing down into the chest of the animal. The blade sank deep as the man's forward momentum carried him into the enraged creature. Blood spewed out of the animal as it grabbed for the man that had hurt it so, and jumped with him into the grotto.

Sarah quickly sighted on the next man, concerned that her slowness might have killed the creature that had suddenly come to their rescue. As she was about to depress the trigger again a large boot slammed down on the short barrel of the weapon, knocking it onto the wet stone floor. She looked up; another of the remaining mercenaries was standing over her with his own smoking weapon pointed right at her head. Now that the animal appeared to be disposed of, the man clearly relished the power of holding the struggling Sarah beneath his boot.

Robby saw what was about to happen and came at the two. Another of the surviving men quickly swiped at Robby and sent him sprawling to the floor. Several of the panicked girls screamed as he skidded along the stone.

Sarah knew the master chief wasn't likely to throw this man off his feet. But instead of being scared at her imminent death, she became angry as her attacker brought his hot gun barrel up to her face. Suddenly he jerked as a look of consternation crossed his face. His body quickly jerked again and then he fell forward, slamming face first into the cave opening and rolling dead onto the floor. Sarah felt the fine spray of his blood as it misted down her face. But her horror turned to amazement when two figures rose from the grotto. They were dressed in black wetsuits and advanced with two XM-8 light machine guns at an aiming position.

Now 5.56-millimeter rounds started to slam into the remaining men. Five of them went down without ever knowing they were hit, bullets neatly parting their foreheads. Three others besides the one that had almost dispatched Sarah managed to at least turn toward their sudden executioners. Going from a frightening animal attack to this new threat overwhelmed them; more XM-8 rounds easily found their mark. One man withdrew a hand grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, and was in the act of throwing it toward the new, human demons to attack them when he was also hit, the round glancing off his skull that sent him sprawling. The grenade hit the slick flooring and Virginia, thinking quickly, picked it up and threw it toward the canal opening to the outside. It hit the floor and bounded into the arched opening, where it detonated next to the right-side arch. The shrapnel burrowed into the soft, water-soaked stone.

Sarah, thirty feet from Virginia and the others, realized what was happening. They had been saved! The two figures rising from the water were close to being the best marksmen in the world. Jack Collins and Carl Everett were methodical as they went from man to man, dispatching all with neat shots to the head. Sarah knew they would take no chances in the environment around them and with the students in such close proximity, even while they would be ruthless in dealing with the remaining threat. Jack and Carl would never allow an enemy to survive to harm people again, especially where kids were concerned. The four remaining men who tried to run for the wall opening only knew the sudden slug of impact on the back of their heads as their bodies came crashing down to the ground.

"Clear!" the smaller of the two men shouted in the echoing and sudden silence.

"Clear!" the taller answered.

Jack and Carl moved their silenced weapons from side to side as they visually covered the interior of the cave around them. Everywhere their eyes went, the barrel followed. Several of the girls of the Zachary expedition screamed as one of the smoking barrels slowly pointed at them and then moved on.

"That's it, Jack, they're all down! The bad guys are down!" Sarah called out as she held one arm in the air.

Slowly the two men stepped from the shallows of the grotto. They had entered from the lagoon side right into the melee of the animal attack. They had watched the violence explode above them as the beast swiped and moved like greased lightning. They couldn't tell who was being attacked or who was inside the large chamber they had surfaced into. After the beast disappeared, they quickly assessed the situation and Jack communicated with hand gestures what the plan would be. The former Special Forces operative and ex-navy SEAL had understood exactly how to proceed. Now they stepped onto the hot floor and surveyed the devastation around them.

"Goddamn, Toad, it took you assholes long enough!" Jenks said, grimacing in anguish as Virginia again tried to straighten out the mangled broken right leg.

"Chief, we thought that fish man may have got you," Carl said as he examined the first mercenary Sarah had wrestled with. The man was surely dead.

The lieutenant commander stood as Jack and Sarah came back to the group. Carl safed his XM-8 and placed it on a snap hook on his weight belt. He unzipped the top half of his black wetsuit because of the extreme heat.

"I see you found some of the kids that we saw on the milk cartons, Chief," he said as he took in the haggard group before him.

"Jack, Helen's with them; she's in there." Sarah pointed.

Jack slowly removed his wetsuit hood, then went toward the small cave and bent down. He shined his light on the lone person inside. Helen Zachary moved, rolling her head toward him.

"Professor Zachary, I'm Major Jack Collins. Niles sends his regards and wants you to come home now," he said as he stepped into the enclosure. He kneeled down and took her hand. Jack immediately recognized the nature of the sickness afflicting Helen.

She attempted to smile but failed through her obvious pain. "Give Niles… my apologies, I… don't think I'll be able to… promise anything," she murmured and Jack squeezed her hand.

"I'll tell him that you did what you set out to do, Professor. You proved your theory about a species unknown to us."

This time she managed to smile, as Virginia entered the cave. The heat inside because of the lava vent made it almost unbearable, but still Helen shivered with cold.

"Don't harm the creatures…they are the last of their… kind, there are… no more… mysteries left… let them be."

Virginia quickly reached down and touched Helen's head. The sad, trembling smile remained as the professor felt her touch.

"Tell… Niles…I love him…and…I'm—"

Helen stopped breathing and lay still. The smile had left her face as her last thought had been to try to apologize to Niles Compton.

"She's gone," Virginia said as she released Helen's wrist. She took a deep breath and swiped angrily at a tear as it slid down her face.

Jack took Virginia's hand and held it for a brief moment.

"How many of these animals are we dealing with, Virginia? Carl and I think there was one in the lagoon; it couldn't have been two places at once."

"I don't know, maybe just two."

"There are two of them?" Jack said, releasing her hand.

"Helen believed one is wild, but the other one saved us and attacked those assholes. The professor discovered its ancestors had worked the mine as slaves; the Inca may have bred insanity along the way to increase the beasts' cruelty," Robby said as he and Kelly entered the enclosure. His eyes welled up when he saw that Helen was dead.

"Hang in there, kid, this isn't over yet," Jack said as he drew his nine-millimeter from inside his wetsuit and tossed it to Robby, who caught it and looked inquiringly at the major.

Carl withdrew his own handgun and gave it to Sarah. "Collect a couple of those Ingrams and a few magazines; those guys won't need them."

Jack stood and made his way out of the ancient slave quarters. He was followed by Robby and the others. The major looked at the face of each student; these kids had been through so much. His eyes locked on Kelly; clearly she was all right. He took a deep breath, relieved that was one major concern out of the way.

"The professor would want you to be tougher for just a little while longer," he said as he watched Sarah gather weapons from the dead men around them. "She died happy, so you remember what she did here in this place. Tell others about what she found, and make them believe with the same zeal and commitment she had. Make her proud. Now, before we attempt to get out of here, we need to know what's happening, I and Lieutenant Commander Everett here don't take kindly to surprises."

Robby fought back tears as he left the small cave. "This place, it's bad; no one can ever find this mine."

Jack's eyes went from Robby to Virginia, who moved to the master chief's side.

"This place is contaminated, Jack. Its walls are shot through with uranium that has been naturally enriched, tons and tons of it. It's very close to weapons grade," Virginia said as she gestured around her at the gleaming walls filled with tritium. "It's as if it came from a breeder reactor — impossible, I know, but Jack, it's here and it's starting to kill us all even as we speak."

Jack quickly pulled Carl aside and they took a few steps away from the group. He whispered, "If that bomb is inside this mine at the ore level and it goes off, it'll be the largest dirty bomb in the world. It would kill half of this hemisphere if it's ignited by a thermal nuclear device."

"And the hits just keep coming," Carl whispered back.

Jack turned and found the face he was looking for.

"You, your name is Robby, right?"

"Yes, sir," he said, stepping forward.

"Kennedy, the name rings a bell?

"Yes, sir. I think he knew about this place before we ever got here, don't ask me how, but somehow he knew."

"Son, did he have a case he brought along, about four feet long, three deep? It may have had a flotation device attached since you were going to be working near water. The case was more than likely yellow in color."

"Yeah, he practically killed us looking for it after the larger creature sank the boat and barge."

Jack reached into his wetsuit. He pulled out the release key that was attached to his dogtag, and showed Robby and the others. He didn't have to ask as Robby's eyes widened. Jack knew then that at least the professor's assistant had seen the key before.

"This is an arm key for a military weapon. I can tell it's been used because, once the key is turned in the device, a small, bulbous end breaks off and allows an electrical connection. Your Mr. Kennedy found the device and armed it. Now think, son. Do you or the others know where he did this?"

"We were separated; we never saw the case after the boat and barge were sunk." Robby was starting to look desperate as he stepped forward with Kelly in tow and whispered to the major. "Sir, this is Kelly." He looked around at the staring faces. "She's the presi—"

"The president's daughter; we know, son. Right now we have to get everyone out of here." Jack looked deeply into the boy's eyes. "Okay?"

"Yes, sir."

"Now we have—"

Jack's words were cut short as a loud cracking sound rumbled through the flooring of the enclosure.

The shrapnel from the grenade had penetrated the water-soaked limestone of the underwater opening and had created several faults that had slowly expanded over the last few minutes to the breaking point, until the pressure from the outside lagoon was too much for the ancient engineering to bear. The wall and arched opening gave way as one, and a torrent of water rushed into the quickly overwhelmed canal.

"Jack, that opening was engineered by the Inca to hold the lagoon at bay by a precise measuring of the opening against the pressure of the outside depth. The system has failed and can no longer hold the water back. Judging by the walls' thickness, we have about three minutes before there's no way out of here," Sarah said as she started to push everyone toward the same opening Farbeaux had vanished into.

Jack leaned inside the smaller enclosure after tossing Virginia his XM-8. Then he grabbed the master chief and threw him over his shoulder.

As Carl and Sarah started to run with the others toward the stairs just inside the small archway, a loud crack could be heard. They watched in horror while a long fissure opened at the center of the wall, right through the ancient drawings carved by the Sincaro, effectively cutting the images right in two. The crack widened as it hit the small arch and, in a split second, it collapsed. Large stones from the opening's interior rolled and crashed into the main chamber, making their attempted escape impossible. They all came to a sudden stop when the water slammed into their legs as it breached the top of the canal.

"Jesus Christ, this doesn't look good," Jenks hissed as he and Jack saw what had just happened.

For an exclamation mark to his comment, the grotto erupted, as the floor beneath cracked open and a geyser of lagoon water shot straight up, adding its volume to that of the failed canal opening. The group led by Carl and Sarah backed into Jack, Jenks, and Virginia.

Jack was shocked to see Sarah throw down the two weapons she was carrying and run toward the back wall of the excavated cavern. He saw her start to slide her hands along the wall as if searching for something. The water was hitting Jack's knees and was rising fast.

"You didn't happen to bring scuba gear for everyone did you, Major?" Jenks said upside down from his position slumped over Jack's shoulder.

"Carl, give me that torch!" Sarah called out as the others looked on in utter confusion. Between Sarah's yelling, the unbearable roar of onrushing water, and their imminent death, the students stood frozen is terror.

Carl grabbed one of the wall torches and tossed it to Sarah, who caught it deftly in one hand and then turned back to continue feeling the wall. It had taken her only a moment to realize they only had one hope of escape, and she was praying she wasn't wrong. It had been the memory of her last classroom discussion that had spurred her to action.

Jack felt helpless as he watched, the weight of Jenks across his shoulder growing heavier by the moment. "Robby, you and Kelly and the others get over there and help her do whatever she's doing!" he ordered.

Robby and ten others, including Kelly, ran for the back wall. They only had to wait a moment for Sarah to explain. The water was now at waist level, and Jack had to adjust the position of Jenks as the master chief's head was momentarily dunked under the swirling onslaught.

"A depression, a varying thickness of stone, something that looks out of place on the wall," Sarah shouted to the students over the sound of rushing water.

All ten of Helen Zachary's grad students, now joined by Virginia and Everett, started feeling the wall, working their way around, some even ducking beneath the surface of the swirling rise to feel the stones underneath. Their time was dwindling rapidly. The water was now at Jack's lower chest. The master chief had maneuvered up and was bracing himself by holding onto the neoprene rubber of the major's wetsuit.

"Oh, boy, someone needs to pull something out of their tight ass, or we're going to spend a long time here!" Jenks yelled out to the students.

Jack was following the students' search when his eyes fell on an iron torch. It was lit but that wasn't what caught his attention. It was somewhat larger than the others surrounding the chamber, and it had deep etchings around the base. As his eyes adjusted to its intense light, Jack made out the image of an eagle, or was it a hawk? Clutched in this large bird's talons was the carved image of a man.

"Sarah, the torch!" he called.

Sarah looked up, momentarily confused as she turned toward the torch she was holding next to the wall. Jack, his hands full of the master chief, nodded toward the larger torch on the wall. She located what he was pointing at immediately and went to it. The water was now at Sarah's shoulders, as it was some of the smaller students, as well. She quickly examined the carvings. Without warning, she reached up and pulled down on the iron torch. Nothing.

"Carl, here! Pull down on the torch. I think it's a fulcrum release!"

"A what?" he asked as he waded toward Sarah, quickly followed by Robby.

"Pull, damn it, pull!" Sarah yelled as she hopped to keep her head above the water.

Carl reached up and pulled. Still nothing. Robby added his weight to it and yet the torch didn't budge. Sarah was beginning to think she was wrong when, in a second effort by Robby and Carl, the torch swung down, its lit head dipping into the water with a sizzle. Sarah saw the stone just to the right of the levered torch suddenly slide up about three feet into the wall. She quickly swam over and pulled herself up.

"Carl, there should be a stone handle in the cavity. It only moves one way — pull it!" she said as her head slipped under the water.

He was torn between getting Sarah to the surface and doing what he was told. He reached for the opening in the wall just as water started entering the cavity. He felt around and his fingers hit on a slab that was sticking up. It was about ten inches in height and about six wide, and was made of stone, as Sarah had said.

"What in the hell…?" he said as Sarah came up from behind and held onto his shoulder.

"Pull!"

Carl pulled and the ancient fulcrum release handle moved easily, as if it had been greased only yesterday.

A tremendous rumbling was heard even over the roar of water as a tenby-eight-foot section of wall opened to their left. It was immediately filled with water. Sarah shouted for everyone to enter the new, larger cavity. Carl helped the students inside, while Jack and Virginia struggled with Jenks as they slowly moved toward the wall. As they did, an eruption shattered the flooring as one of the caldera vents, ruptured by the cold water, exploded with a crushing thunder. Another vent farther away popped when the elements of fire and water could no longer tolerate each other.

Jack struggled and finally entered the opening just as Sarah started smashing a small stone to the opening's right side. It was smaller than its surrounding neighbors, and Sarah hoped beyond prayer it was the right one.

Carl was telling the students to brace themselves against the far wall of the twenty-by-twenty-foot dead end they were now trapped in, and to rise with the water, just as Sarah screamed in frustration and stopped using her small hand. She pulled the Beretta Carl had given her.

"Hold your ears!" she shouted as she fired into the stone. The bullet struck and cracked it, and it fell into the swirling water. She dropped the gun and braced herself against the small opening she had created. "Thank God!" she yelled as she reached in. She quickly found the second fulcrum release and said a silent prayer that the Inca were as efficient at their engineering as she had always heard. She pulled the release.

Suddenly to the shock of all inside, they were hurled into blackness as the wall above the door frame slid down with crushing weight. The parting waters of the impact sent a torrent of water rushing at everyone, smashing them against walls and floor. Some, Jack and Jenks included, lost their hold and went under. In a split second, the world became quiet as they came to the surface sputtering and spitting. The waters inside the chamber soon settled and they were all left in the dark.

"Disneyland would love this little ride," Carl said as he helped one of the smaller girls stay afloat.

"Everyone all right?" Jack called out.

There were yes and no answers but the major figured, if they could talk, they were alive.

"The ride's not over, people. Let's hope everything still works, or we just went from drowning to being entombed forever."

As they listened the floor beneath their submerged feet began to rumble. Then a soft green glow started to illuminate the interior of the room. Chunks of tritium touched off by the brightness of the torchlight before the door slammed down had started the reaction it needed to gather its internal energy and start to brighten. Jack quickly found Sarah as the rumbling below grew to a fever pitch.

"This isn't going to be pleasant," she said as she locked eyes with him.

"What's happening?" Virginia asked. She started to feel that the floor and the water around her were heating up. "What is this thing?"

"It's what the ancient Inca used as an escape route in case of collapse. The mine must be sprinkled with them."

"I don't like the sound of this," the badly injured Jenks said.

"Sprinkled with what?" Carl asked as he took the floating Sarah and held onto her.

"I think we're in an elevator."

"A what?" several people asked at once.

"An elevator!" Sarah shouted.

At just that moment the rumbling stopped and suddenly they heard a great hissing as the water around them became almost unbearable with heat. Then in an instant, an explosion rocked the chamber and all inside were pressed underwater as centrifugal force sent them all to the bottom.

Five thousand years ago, the Inca had feared being trapped in cave-ins far more than they dreaded any other possible disaster. Consequently, they had engineered the most ingenious escape platform the ancient world had ever devised. They had taken a naturally formed shaft that ran up and outward to the top of their excavated pyramid and had drilled a shaft beneath the flooring of the lowest cavern. Once reaching the boiling lava flow two thousand feet below, the Inca had capped the well at the cost of over a thousand slaves' lives. The chamber had been fitted to precise specifications inside the naturally formed shaft, which had been smoothed to a finish that would have made any future stonemason proud. The seal formed a natural tube that was as close to airtight as humanly possible at the time. Sarah had heard a rumor of the technology advanced by the University of Southern California, following a large dig inside the ruins of the northern Yucatan site of Chichen Itza. She had remembered the specifications — and now had prayed the Inca had gotten it right. They had.

The chamber was propelled up through the interior of the giant pyramid at eighty miles an hour, and was gradually building speed. The pressure buildup under the chamber had been unleashed when Sarah had activated the fulcrum release, and that in turn had brought down ten tons of iron weight onto the stone caps that had been sealed five thousand years before by the elevators' original designers. The immediate release of so much pressure and steam just beneath the designed escape apparatus had no difficulty in forcing the stone chamber up and into the smoothed shaft. The only problem the Inca had failed to see was that of stopping. Even Sarah, the professor who taught her, and many others who had studied the system in classrooms across the globe were unable to figure out the problem. It was assumed that since the shaft and the chamber itself weren't perfect, the pressure would eventually bleed off. But there was controversy in that lone theory. No one had been able to see any logical explanation as to how this could be controlled. In essence, they could be traveling in an express train with no brakes.

As the centrifugal force increased, all inside sputtered to the surface of the rapidly shallowing water as it was forced out of the minute cracks in the chamber. They could feel the speed gathering as the elevator roared upward into the unknown parts of the pyramid.

"Oh, shit," Kelly said as she hugged Robby.

"I hate this!" the master chief announced.

Suddenly the chamber tilted, as the elevator started to climb the steep, inverted slope of the inside of the great pyramid. Everyone screamed as the angle changed and they lost their footing. Jenks screamed in agony as Jack lost his balance and fell, crashing them both to the floor. The angle of ascent finally stabilized as the enclosure made its way up toward the uppermost reaches of El Dorado.

"We're slowing!" Sarah shouted.

Beneath the flooring of the chamber, the pressure was bleeding off the higher they climbed. The Incan engineers had calculated the length of the escape against the distance the pressurized wave could travel through the shaft, a simple formula that most would have considered impossible. And it would have been, even by the Inca, if several hundred Sincaro hadn't been used as guinea pigs in its weight-to-pressure-ratio experimental development.

Without warning, a tremendous hissing exploded with ear-hurting sound through the stone walls of the chamber. Outside, as the elevator passed the third level from the top, another fulcrum release was ripped that opened a series of stone valves in the shaft. Steam and pressure was rapidly bled off in a calculated feat of engineering that was designed to evacuate the shaft of pressure that was left over after the push to the top. At the same time as the bone-crushing stop on the upper level slammed everyone once again to the floor, the passing chamber tripped a series of stone nubs that broke away and allowed spring-loaded logs, hewn and covered with amber thousands of years before as a preservative, to pop free of the shaft through drilled holes. Six of these shot out under the chamber and arrested it just as it rebounded off the stone ceiling.

The wall that had closed to seal them in broke free and crashed into a large chamber where the elevator had come to rest. Dust swirled about as coughing and crying could be heard. From somewhere high above, natural light filtered into the highest chamber of the pyramid as Jack quickly stood and pulled Jenks out.

"Quick, Carl, get everyone out!" the major shouted.

Now the others heard what he had, the splintering of wood coming from the shaft. There was a general panic as the students rushed, were pulled, or crawled out of the elevator as the popping and cracking became louder. Just as Sarah cleared the doorway, the elevator gave a huge lurch and then it quickly vanished back down the shaft in the swirl and vacuum of the air.

As they all looked at one another in turn, most still in shock at their double narrow escape, the silence seemed to be a blessing.

"I guess the brakes gave out," Sarah said weakly as she turned over and lay on her back to stare upward at the intricately carved pyramid top two hundred feet up.

But of course it was the gruffness of the man in the most pain who broke the ice of terror that shrouded the company. Jenks sat up on one elbow and looked around.

"Goddamned Incans can't design worth a shit!"

23

The dim light at the top of the pyramid had faded to nothing as Jack gathered torches and relit them and passed them around.

The new level they were in was fresher than anything they had come across since their arrival inside El Dorado. Jack had surveyed the extreme topmost of the apex and found the main vents that gravity fed the canal system throughout the mine. The point of the pyramid must have protruded from the river above, as its windows were above the surface. The torrent of water came down inside a culvert from the falls above and emptied into another large grotto at the center of the floor. The speed of the current was adjustable, he could see, by a system of floodgates controlled from this room. A large handle was set into one stone wall, and that in turn was attached to a dam door. The flow of water into the grotto was smooth and even, creating a current of a gentle five or six miles an hour down the gravity-fed canal system.

"There must be close to three hundred miles of interior canals inside the mine. The structure is unlike anything uncovered in history. A team could spend a lifetime in here and never uncover anything," said a woman's voice.

Jack turned and saw Sarah as she came up behind him. She was also admiring the dam engineering inside the wall.

"Well, you discovered enough to save our asses down there," he said as he turned back to the wall and held a hand to it.

"Lucky guess," she said as she, too, placed a hand on the dam. "There must be thousands and thousands of gallons of water inside that wall. In its heyday, the Inca may have had several hundred treasure boats traversing this system."

"There's eight of them right there," Jack said, moving his torch so Sarah could see the strangely crafted boats near the canal. "More over there, although they don't look in as good a shape."

Sarah observed that several of the boats had been laid along the far wall, and had been damaged severely.

"But I think with a little luck, these may hold up," Jack continued.

"Are you thinking of using the canals to get back down to Teacher?"

"You and the others are, but Carl and I have some searching to do."

"The bomb?"

"Yeah," was all he said as he made his way back to the group.

The interior was now well lit by at least thirty torches that were either in the hands of people or arrayed in their holders around the room.

"I think this room was nothing more than a way to control the water in the canals. We have to get down. The only way is to use what we have," Jack announced. "It may take hours, or maybe days, to get out on foot. But with the canals we can be assured of going one way, and that's down. Teacher is down there and the way out is also. We haven't a choice."

The students looked at one another. They nodded their agreement that it might be the only way.

"Everyone get over here and select the most structurally sound of these boats. They're large enough to fit everybody."

Carl wasn't paying any attention, as he was looking around the giant water room with Virginia in tow. The cavernous area had several doorways sliced into the stone walls. He would run the torch inside one and then quickly bring up the XM-8 and look inside. He was tired of being surprised and wanted to know his surroundings a little bit better.

"Carl?"

"Yeah," he answered Virginia as he backed out of the fifth room he had looked into.

"This place is giving me the creeps."

He looked at the strained features on Virginia's face in the torchlight.

"You mean more than just the mere fact that we're stuck in probably a ten-thousand-year-old pyramid that was reverse engineered and constructed inside a mountain surrounded by a lagoon that seems to be torn from the pages of a Jurassic history book. Why would that be less creepy than being here in the penthouse of a place that probably killed thousands of innocent Indians?"

Virginia rolled her eyes. "Smart-ass," she said, but she still looked about nervously. "I mean, can't you feel it? It's like we stepped into a cemetery here."

"Look, go on back with the master chief, he seems to become half human when you're around, Doctor. I'll take a look at these other rooms."

"Don't treat me like a child, Carl," she said, as she turned and led the way to the next room.

As Carl smiled and followed, his nose did pick something up that had not been there only moments before. He extended the torch into a room with downward spiraling stone steps. He thought for a moment that he heard something. He listened closely but then figured it had only been the sound of the canal echoing off the walls the deeper he went on this level.

"This must be the peasant's way down," he said.

Virginia didn't answer. Carl leaned back out of the opening and held up the torch. He saw Virginia's back as she stood frozen in the stone archway of the next small chamber. Carl raised his weapon and moved forward. He gently moved the doctor out of the way and brought the torch inside. His eyes took in the sight and he swallowed. Virginia had been right; this level was creepy for a reason. He stepped into the room and shined the torch around. He had entered a mausoleum.

"Go get Jack and Sarah."

The major stepped into the room and saw what had stopped Carl short. The navy man had lit several of the interior torches and was bent low, examining some of the treasure in the room. Not the treasure of El Dorado, but treasure that marked the march of time throughout history.

"Oh my god," Sarah said, as she squeezed by Jack.

In every conceivable position, bodies, skeletal remains actually, were laid out across the floor. Artifacts from the history of El Dorado accompanied these humans from the past in their journey to wherever each soul's journey took them. There were breastplates of conquistador armor, stacked next to a case of old World War II K rations. A rusty Thompson submachine gun was lying across the case. Swords were strewn about. Spears, stone axes. But by far the strangest and most bizarre artifacts were the bodies. They were arrayed in all positions, but Jack noticed one very puzzling thing: all were chained to the wall with bronze manacles.

"The animal."

He turned toward Virginia. Carl and Sarah glanced at her with quizzical curiosity, then Sarah looked down at a sixty-plus-year-old body of an American soldier. The remains were in remarkably good condition because of the dryness of this particular chamber. Both bony arms were raised in mock surrender as the chains held them up. The body next to it was that of a conquistador, the red shirt still clinging to the bony frame, the empty eye sockets staring blankly at the intruders.

"The bodies were brought here postmortem. Their blood has stained the stones around them. The beast brought them here and actually chained them to keep them from escaping the mine, still doing its job after centuries and centuries."

"That's a stretch, Doctor," Carl said.

"It is still an animal, Commander; it hasn't a concept of death, impending or otherwise, its own or another animal's. It just does what it was trained to do."

"Bring back escaped slaves," Sarah said as she went over to another set of bones. "Major, here's a fellow soldier, look."

As Jack and the others stepped to a far corner where Sarah was standing, they could see a skeleton that was chained by only one arm. The man, centuries before when still alive, had worked his right hand free of the manacle that dangled above him. In the torchlight Jack could see that the dying man had used a lead ball, a musket round, which now lay by the bony fingers, to etch something in the stone flooring. Sarah had seen the first few letters and already guessed at the rest. Jack leaned over and blew some of the layers of dust away from the remaining letters.

"I'll be damned," Carl said over Jack's shoulder.

"'Captain Hernando Padilla, 1534,'" the major read aloud.

"What does the rest say?" Virginia asked.

As Jack lightly and reverently moved the bony fingers of the long-dead conquistador away from his final words, the musket ball rolled away and lodged in a flooring crack and stayed. He again took a breath and blew air over the remaining words.

"'Perdoneme,' " Sarah murmured, and then stood and walked away. "Even though he was dying, he was ashamed of what he had done."

"What does the word mean?" Carl asked.

Jack patted him on the shoulder and walked away, sad for a fellow soldier lost long ago and in a place he didn't want to be. No different than any man in the world.

" 'Forgive me,' " Jack answered. "It says simply 'forgive me.' "

Carl looked back down at the skeleton and then the armor lying next to it. The scratch marks, the dents. He couldn't fathom the remarkable journey this man had made, the horror of losing everyone in his command. He shook his head and straightened up just as he heard Virginia intake breath sharply. She had begun slowly backing away from something in a far corner.

"Major, that item you were looking for, what color case was it in again?"

"It should be yellow and—"

Jack's words were cut short when he heard a soft beep coming from the far corner that Virginia was backing away from. Then he saw the case. The weapon was lying in a pile of other items from the Zachary expedition. The beast must have deposited it here along with its other finds. It was as if the animal simply brought anything of shiny or colorful material to its nest, its home. It was a scavenger.

The lieutenant commander joined the major, and they both looked down on the case that protected the five-kiloton nuclear weapon.

"Jack, I think we've found what we were looking for."

Jack leaned over and easily unlatched the lid of the protective case. He had sent Sarah and Virginia back to hurry the others in their preparations for getting out of there.

"Damn," he said as he saw the LED readout on the aluminum facing of the weapon.

"Looks like we finally caught a break," Carl said as he looked over Jack's shoulder.

"Countdown's frozen at thirty minutes. Yeah, we may have. Kennedy turned the key but didn't initiate the countdown. I think we may have that creature to thank for that."

"Yeah, remind me to thank him if we run into him," Carl joked.

Jack closed the case and nodded for Carl to take the other end. They both gently lifted it off the stone floor. As they made their way out of the room, they paused and looked at the remains of the soldiers from the past. Then Jack looked at Carl and shook his head.

"Let's be sure not to join these fellas."

"I always liked the way you think, Jack."

They made their way out of the lighted chamber and into the darker passageway. They had gone just past the opening with the descending staircase when they were suddenly flanked by two men with automatic weapons. One came from the main chamber, the other was hidden in the dark opening and came out after they had passed. The man in the back gestured for them to continue on into the main chamber.

As they entered the lighted main water room, Jack saw that Sarah was there with Virginia and the students. They all looked dejected and terrified.

"Ah, this is like old home week. Major Jack Collins and the resourceful Commander Everett, I am but truly amazed. You two are like the taste of bad wine; I can't seem to get rid of you."

"I'm sorry, Jack," Sarah said.

"Do not speak again, senora," Mendez said as he raised his hand with the gun in it, ready to strike Sarah.

Jack tensed and was about to drop the warhead when Farbeaux's words stopped him and Mendez.

"Stop! You do not strike a lady for being concerned, Senor Mendez."

Mendez's hand was stayed in midair. He turned toward the Frenchman and saw to his bemusement that Farbeaux was looking not at him but at the American major.

Jack looked his way and their eyes locked. They remained fixed like that for a full thirty seconds.

"What is in the case, gold?" Mendez asked as he gestured for his remaining three men to take the case from the Americans.

"I wouldn't do that, mate," Carl said as he was relieved of the weight of the warhead.

Jack continued to look at the Frenchman as he allowed the handle of the case to be pried from his grip.

The two men, the third continuing to hold a gun on the two Americans, took the case over to Mendez. The greedy look in the heavy man's face was one that history had seen millions of times as men of avarice thought they were about to gaze upon a mother lode of riches.

"Gold, artifacts? What is in it?" he asked as he leaned over the yellow aluminum container. He reached out for the heavy-duty clasps.

"Don't!"

Mendez looked up into the face of Farbeaux, who said to Jack, "Explain why he shouldn't open the case, Major."

"By your temperament, I can see you've guessed at it. I prefer not to say anything to the pig," Jack said calmly. He caught Mendez's sneer out of the corner of his eye and just hoped the fat man would make a move in his direction.

"I believe what you have there is a means to seal El Dorado for all time. Am I correct?" Farbeaux reached into his satchel, placed a heavy glove on his hand, then reached inside again and pulled out a greenish lump of stone. It was coursed through with a white, chalky substance. He held it out toward Jack. "To rid the world of the source, this source." The room became silent as everyone stared at the same.

"Mass murder doesn't seem to be a part of your resume, Colonel," Jack finally said.

"The selling of material has always been my way of making ends meet. As you Americans say, I have to keep up with the Joneses."

Farbeaux replaced the enriched sample of uranium in his satchel and removed the glove.

"What you are looking at in the aluminum case, senor, is a five-megaton nuclear warhead. What the Americans fondly call a Backpack Nuke. It's manufactured by the Hanford Nuclear Weapons Facility in Washington State. It is designed for minor troop arrest in a battlefield theater. But would do nicely in bringing down, oh, say a pyramid."

Mendez quickly backed away from the case.

"My Colombian friend may be slow on the uptake, Major, but the man truly does understand death and all its forms. Now as I was saying, this source material is very valuable; even in its rough form, it is capable of creating a weapon of—"

"A dirty bomb, a poor man's nuclear device, I'm still not buying it, Colonel. It's not — you."

"You will share in this also, and you will—" Mendez furiously started to say.

"Senor, please be quiet while we adults speak." Farbeaux smiled as he looked from Mendez to Collins. "Being a supplier of such material to others does not a murderer make. But I admit you're right to a certain degree, Major Collins. Commander Everett, your reputation has preceded you, sir; please do not move another inch toward that fool's weapon," Farbeaux said as he removed his own nine-millimeter and pointed it toward the commander.

Carl stopped inching toward one of the Colombians who, still taking in the situation, hadn't noticed him moving. The man snapped to and shoved him backward.

"As I was saying," Farbeaux's eyes lingered for a moment on Carl and then slowly moved to Jack, "The material has been bought and paid for by a former employer of mine, and his cause is the same as your country's: the elimination of certain terrorist cells across the world. An untraceable source of dirty material that can be sent into mountains and valleys in far-off barbaric places. So you see, our ends are the same."

"I'm afraid you have misjudged Americans, Colonel; we still do things the hard way, and some would say the stupid way. But to introduce radiation into the atmosphere to kill everything along with terrorists, well, the line has to be drawn somewhere."

Farbeaux saw the flick of Jack's eyes toward the darkened corridor from where they had come. He grimaced when he realized the major was playing for time. And Jack had indeed seen something that was sure to occupy Mendez and his men in the next few minutes.

"You're beyond belief!" Farbeaux shouted just as the creature burst from the deep shadows of the corridor.

Farbeaux fired twice as the animal took down the first Colombian by slashing at him with its claws. The Frenchman's bullets did little to slow the beast as it advanced into the chamber.

"Get them in the boat!" Jack shouted toward Carl who had taken out the man he had initially set his sights on — he had simply reached out and snapped the mercenary's neck. Picking up the man's fallen Ingram, he ran toward the cowering students and started to help Sarah and Virginia as they pushed the first boat they came to into the canal.

Several more rounds struck the creature and it roared in pain. It fell to one knee as it grew weak from this and the earlier attack.

Jack quickly ran to the case and opened it. The brightly glowing numbers were still locked at thirty minutes. He reached down, pulled his knife from its scabbard, and was about to smash the readout face, stopping the timer forever, when a stray bullet hit the case in the side. A momentary array of sparks shot from the housing of the weapon. Now a second set of numbers appeared to the right of the minutes. The seconds started tumbling down as the minutes digits went to twenty-nine. The countdown had been activated. The designers of the weapon had placed a fail-safe in the warhead that would not allow an enemy to try to destroy it by doing what had just happened. A bullet in the case would start any command previously placed into the central computer.

The major quickly rolled away from the case and gained his feet as the Colombians stopped firing at the animal and turned their weapons on him. Rounds ricocheted off the floor and walls as Jack ran toward the waiting boat. As he did, he gathered up an XM-8 and quickly fired into the stone-faced dam that held the flow of water at bay. The bullets struck, producing nothing but chips at first, then as the magazine of the XM-8 emptied the stone with the large handle in it cracked and disintegrated. Then, in quick succession, the dam split inside the wall and a torrent of water escaped into the canal system.

Farbeaux watched in horror as the first wave of water smashed into the aluminum case before it reached the canal. The weapon was washed away and was carried by the rush of the water into the canal ahead of the Americans as they shoved off in one of the boats.

Jack jumped into the boat with the fourteen people inside, and of course he fell on Jenks, who screamed out in pain.

"I can't take any more of these roller-coaster rides!" Jenks yelled as the students around him yelled in terror. The large treasure boat sped into the main shaft and disappeared into the darkness.

The Brazilian military chief of staff hung up the phone. He stood and paced to the open window of his residence. The man he had just spoken to had called his private line. His soul had been sold to the devil, the American who would soon become the president of the United States. His future was being planned by others outside of his country. But the deal he had made with the foreign devil was struck, and he had to keep his word. Now there was a supplemental order to the one that sent fifty mercenaries into the valley to stop the American rescue effort — he had to kill to protect his assault force.

He walked back to the nightstand, picked up the phone, and called the Forca Aerea Brasileira (FAB), the Brazilian Air Force; he said he wanted fighters scrambled immediately. He gave the duty officer the orders and the coordinates that had been given to him by his American caller. That done, he placed the phone in its cradle and then picked up the presidential line, to inform the president that the airspace above Brazil was being invaded by military forces of the United States and that he was duty bound to shoot them down.

Two Dassault Mirage 200 °C fighters lifted into the sky and headed west. Used to attacking ground targets consisting of production and distribution sites for the cocaine trade, the two pilots were stunned to learn they had been ordered to intercept and down an aircraft that had been identified as a civilian airliner that had invaded Brazilian airspace. It wasn't until ten minutes after they went to afterburner that they were informed by the chief of staff personally that the invader in question was actually a military variant of the American Boeing 747, and that the aircraft's intentions were hostile.

The president had been upstairs with the First Lady, awaiting any word from Nevada, when the national security advisor called. The president went downstairs in his white shirt and went directly to Ambrose's office in the West Wing, but was met by him in the hallway before he could reach the office.

"Mr. President, maybe you'd better inform me what operation is running in Brazil, since it seems to no longer be a secret."

"What do you mean?" he asked as he took a piece of paper from Ambrose.

"The Brazilian Air Force has scrambled two Mirage fighters, and they are heading in a westerly direction. Fort Huachuca in Arizona has picked up radio chatter that says they have orders to shoot down a 747 overflying their airspace with hostile intent."

The president read the handwritten note Ambrose had jotted down while talking with the intelligence-gathering station in Arizona. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"Get me the secretary of state."

"He's already on the line, sir."

The president walked past Ambrose and into his office. He picked up the receiver and the secretary was waiting.

"Get to the presidential residence and get him to rescind that order, now!" the president said angrily, not bowing to diplomatic formality. His patience was starting to wear thin after hours of consoling his wife about their daughter.

"Mr. President, Brazil insists it has every right to down that aircraft, and will do so if it doesn't turn away from their airspace."

"To hell with it. Tell him that aircraft is there to suppost a rescue operation and has no intention of harming any Brazilian nationals. They are support only."

"I will try once again to get through," the secretary lied. He knew the president had ordered the fighter groups onboard Nimitz and John C. Stennis to stand down and and that they should in no way come to the aid of Proteus.

The president hung up the phone and addressed Ambrose. "How did the Brazilian Air Force get the information on Proteus?"

"The weapons platform?" Ambrose asked, acting innocent of the knowledge.

"Someone passed them information. Find out who, and do it yesterday! Also, get me a direct line to COMMSURPAC; I can't leave them boys hanging out there with nothing to protect them."

Ambrose had never seen the man lose his temper before. He watched as the president turned and walked quickly to the Oval Office. If he called in protection for Proteus, there would be hell to pay, and their tracks would be covered by an overt act of war.

Ambrose relaxed as he saw the secretary's makeshift plan take shape.

Newly appointed Second Lieutenant Will Mendenhall swallowed when he adjusted the magnification on his night-vision scope. Ten Zodiac-type rubber rafts entered the lagoon on the opposite side of the falls from where he had set up position. He removed his right hand and shook it, trying to get some feeling back into it after the long climb up the side of the falls. He had used the rough-hewn archway that covered the falls most of the way, and then he had to use the natural features of the terrain to ascend the rest. His hands had been severely cut and scraped from the jagged rocks and bushes. But he had finally made it only five minutes before he spied the first boat. He lowered the goggles and looked at his watch; it was 0515 in the morning. He hoped Ryan was in place, or else the team below in the mine was about to have a shitload of company. Neither Night Rider nor the major had answered his first three calls.

Mendenhall quickly removed the radio from his belt and made sure the frequency was set on channel 78, and then he took a deep breath.

"Night Rider, Night Rider, this is Conquistador, do you copy? Over!"

The converted 747–400 was cruising at twenty-eight thousand feet in clear skies. The pilot had been on the radio for the past hour talking with the Brazilian civil authorities and explaining that they had rudder difficulties and were circling while their flight engineer checked out their hydraulic systems. They were screaming bloody murder but what else could they do, allow an air cargo plane for an influential international company like Federal Express to crash because they couldn't allow some extra time over their airspace?

Inside technicians were cursing and shouting at one another as they furiously worked on the system that wasn't supposed to be fully operational for three more years. The megawatt-class, high-energy chemical oxygen iodine laser system had malfunctioned four different times that day, causing fires in two of those incidents.

Ryan was watching the fiasco develop alongside two of his six-man Delta team when an air force major tapped him on the shoulder.

"We have Conquistador on the horn; he's asking for Night Rider One," the major said over the noise in the cargo bay.

Ryan nodded and followed him. "Tell those monkeys they're on," he said to the Delta sergeant, indicating the laser technicians. "And remind them that American lives are at stake."

Ryan entered a separate area that was closed off and quiet. He leaned over the radio operator's ejection seat, careful to avoid the ejection handle looped at the top. He picked up a headset and pushed the button on the long cord.

"Conquistador, this is Night Rider actual, over."

"Night Rider, we have bandits approaching our pos, are you tracking, over."

Ryan leaned over and whispered to the satellite officer, a lieutenant colonel who was looking at a real-time infrared image downloaded from Boris and Natasha.

"We currently count fifty-four targets and ten craft. The information has already been fed to the targeting computer," the lieutenant colonel said.

"Roger, Conquistador, we are tracking, over."

"Start the music, Night Rider, they are in our laps. Operation Spoiled Sport is on! Execute, execute, execute!"

Ryan knew it was Will Mendenhall on the radio so he decided to chance it. "Conquistador, you find a safe location. I don't trust this thing. Over."

"Been warned already, Night Rider, just get the bad guys. Conquistador is beating feet. Out."

Ryan nodded to the lieutenant colonel who was in charge of the operation and also that of targeting. His system relied on Boris and Natasha, whose infrared cameras locked onto the ring of balloon-carried heat emitters that circled the lagoon. Once that location and exact coordinates were fed into the targeting data, the KH-11 locked in on the individual heat sources of the men inside that target area or, more precisely, their body heat. The chemical oxygen iodine laser (COIL) would use the reaction of chlorine gas with liquid basic hydrogen peroxide to produce electronically excited gas-phase oxygen molecules. The oxygen would then transfer its energy to iodine atoms, which would emit radiation at 1.315 microns, producing a beam that would cleanly slice through solid steel. Assuming it worked.

The lieutenant colonel alerted the laser technicians — who actually worked for Northrop-Grumman — to activate in thirty seconds. Then he casually adjusted the mirror based inside the open barrel to disperse fifty-four separate high-energy beams that would target even moving objects — the mirror would separate and bounce the one main beam and split it into the individual killing lasers — all in theory, of course.

"Stand by to initiate," he said into his headset.

Ryan frowned as he watched the targets getting closer to the falls. "Stand by to initiate" usually meant "stand by with the fire extinguishers," he thought, as he closed his eyes in silent prayer for his friends.

Outside of the command center, the power grid went to maximum as the main generators kicked in. They reached 100 percent power without exploding, at least this time. At the same time on the targeting screen, ten illuminated circles centered around each individual target on the surface of the lagoon.

Outside the 747, a large port spiraled open fifteen feet below the cockpit. The pilot closed a specially made blind that would protect them from the intense light that would escape the port just feet from where he and his copilot sat.

"Stand by, system at one hundred three percent power and targets are acquired. FIRE COIL!"

Jason Ryan flinched as nothing happened.

"Wasn't there supposed to be a power surge about right now?" he shouted angrily.

Outside the soundproof cabin and in the cockpit, the pilot saw thirteen alarms all start flashing at once. The red blinking lights showed power loss in the 747's main power systems. The four massive engines were powering down as if the pilot had slid the throttles back, and the nose of the giant 747–400 started dipping. The pilot immediately announced an emergency.

Ryan held onto one of the computer consoles and threw off his headset.

"Goddammit! We're going to lose people down there!"

The lieutenant colonel in charge of the COIL called, "We're about to lose the aircraft, Mr. Ryan!"

"This piece of shit needs to be lost! Goddamned technology, we can make fantastic video games but we can't get one piece of military hardware to work as fucking designed!"

Ryan's words were drowned out by the whine as the giant Boeing aircraft started to fall out of the sky.

Mendenhall was about to try the radio to raise Ryan again when suddenly the night around him lit up with large-caliber tracer fire from the lagoon. Someone in one of the Zodiacs had caught him on night-vision. Fifty-caliber rounds struck the rocks and bushes around him as he raised his nine-millimeter with one hand and tried the radio with the other. He fired down into the lagoon as he attempted to raise Night Rider.

Ryan was holding onto the same console, only now it was at an angle that clearly said the 747 was heading for the deck. He was calm as he had been though a similar situation before during his last days in the navy. You just had to know how to handle it, he thought.

One of the Northrop-Grumman technicians in the bay knew what had happened. He suspected it during the last test and was prepared for it. The main command console was patched into the Boeing power grid and when the targeting computer sent the command electronically to the COIL itself, the entire system shorted out. He pulled open the panel and found the wires he needed, and jerked on them. They came free and then he pulled the command wire and routed it through another power circuit. He quickly reattached the cockpit throttle input cable. Immediately, he was rewarded with the increasing whine of the four General Electric engines as they sparked back up to full power. The technician leaned over and struck the intercom.

"Power restored to aircraft systems. Power restored to COIL targeting!" The tech slid down along one of the interior bulkheads. Man, are heads going to roll when they find out they had routed one of the weapons systems through the platform power systems. Shit!

Ryan felt the nose come up as the power from the engines clearly indicated they were once again climbing.

"Rider, we're taking heavy fire, over!" Ryan finally heard Mendenhall's firm but harried call.

He was about to initiate the order to fire once again when the radar intercept officer at the front of the 747 called over the headsets: "We have two inbound bogies at fifty miles and closing fast. They snuck up on us. They're squawking Brazilian Air Force and they are ordering us out of their airspace or they will open fire."

"Time to firing sequence on Proteus?" Ryan asked loudly into the radio.

"Five minutes to bring up power," the lieutenant colonel said as he quickly retargeted the scattered boats.

"Damn it, we'll be a fireball in two minutes!"

The two Mirage 2000 fighters finally saw the anticollision lights of the 747 after the giant plane made a sudden dive for the jungle below. They adjusted their pattern to take up station one mile behind the large jet. The lead fighter armed his weapons. His orders were clear: down the Americans.

He used his thumb to select his weapon, two South African-made MAA-1 Piranhas, a short-range air-to-air missile relying on infrared passive guidance, which seeks the target's heat emissions coming primarily from the engines. He immediately received guidance lock from the seeker heads of the two missiles themselves, which were poised on the launch rails beneath both wings just waiting for the electrical signal that would send them on their deadly way.

"Goddammit, they have missile lock on us, Ryan!" the pilot called over the radio.

"I don't give a damn, we have our orders! Now get us back into position and fire the damned weapon before we lose those people down there!"

The Brazilian fighter pilots were relieved to see the giant aircraft start a slow turn back to the east. Then they watched and followed the 747, hoping they were about to leave the area from the direction they had come. They didn't know it was only starting to make a long and slow circle as their targets were reacquired. When the lead pilot saw they were commencing another attack run, he became angered at the perceived deception and quickly spurred the French-built fighter back into its optimum firing position. He knew the 747 was ten minutes away from a sure death as it slowly turned.

Ambrose nodded to the Secret Service agent outside the Oval Office and then walked in. The president was standing at his desk with his hands placed firmly on its top.

"What's happening?"

The president didn't answer. He was looking down in thought as the muscles in his jaw were clenching and unclenching. Then the phone buzzed.

"The president of Brazil is returning your call," his secretary said from the outer office.

"Mr. President, what are you doing?" Ambrose asked nervously.

"Something I should have done from the beginning," he said as he picked up the phone.

Ambrose froze. The man was calling the president of Brazil personally, circumventing the secretary of state.

"Mr. President, thank you for taking my call. I need to ask you to stand down your forces. The aircraft in question is on a mission to support a rescue operation only. There is no hostile intent on their part."

Ambrose slowly tossed a file folder on the coffee table in the front of one of the couches and sat. He closed his eyes as he felt his career, even his freedom, slipping out of his grasp.

"Yes, Secretary Nussbaum has undoubtedly explained to you the circumstances surrounding the—"

The president fell silent as the conversation became one-sided. He listened intently for three minutes and then angrily pounded his fist on his desk. He thanked the president of Brazil and hung up. He then pressed the button on his intercom. "Get me Admiral Handley at COMSURPAC headquarters in Pearl Harbor, now!"

The tone emanating from the seeker heads of the Piranhas once again told the pilot his missiles had locked onto the 747 heat signature. He was moments away from triggering the weapon when his wingman called out frantically.

"We have two inbound targets closing in from the west! They are at mach two point two and coming on fast from low altitude; they must have been orbiting in our airspace somewhere!"

The flight lead removed his finger from the trigger and started looking to the west. It took him a moment to find the afterburner glare of the two hostile aircraft, but when he saw them he knew they had covered their approach by flying at tree canopy level. As he thought this he heard the telltale warning that his fighter was being painted by the enemy weapons radar. Then a split second later, the tone became louder and steady, and that was when he knew his Mirage had been locked onto by an enemy missile.

"Brazilian fighter planes, this is United States Navy fighter aircraft to your west. We ask that you alter your approach to United States experimental aircraft that is currently off course. Their overflight is an accident, repeat, it is accidental. We have orders to protect United States property at all costs. Do you read, Brazilian flight leader?"

A cheer rose inside the spacious area inside Proteus as the announcement was made that the Brazilian fighters had turned away. Ryan listened as the communications operator informed them that the attacking fighters had been called off by the Brazilian chief of staff, calling out of Brasilia.

"Goddamn!" one of the Delta men said, shaking his head. "Someone told someone else we're the good guys!"

"Colonel, how long until you have a firing solution?" Ryan asked.

"We have one now, but it looks like our targets are awful close to your nofire area; they are almost clear of the heat signature pattern."

"Fire, goddammit, FIRE!"

The 747 started to shake and vibrate. They heard the main generator kick over to full power. And that was when Ryan just knew the whole platform was going to explode.

Mendenhall heard the click as his weapons firing pin hit an empty chamber. He had just hoped he had poked a few holes in a few Zodiacs below. With that thought of devious hope came twenty heavy-caliber rounds. Their tracers phosphorous red and horrible to behold, they slammed into his position.

He lay back and fumbled for another magazine when the sky lit up with a green blaze that shocked him into stillness. As he watched upward in amazement, fifty-two fluorescent laser beams coursed through the clear night air with deadly silence. It looked as if they formed the spokes of a wheel as they struck and then moved like giant stirrers mixing a drink.

The lead Zodiacs exploded as the COIL made adjustments in her targeting. Men were sliced in two by the green mirror-enhanced lasers as they struck them and punctured easily though their clothes and flesh. They didn't even have time to react as the airborne laser killed half of the assault element in a matter of 1.327 seconds.

The sky had formed into a giant pinwheel of green light, taking out the first twenty-five-plus men before they knew they had even been attacked. Will Mendenhall was in shock as the attack ended even before he had finished flinching. He rubbed his eyes from the sudden flash, then looked out over the water. He saw nothing but floating rubber and dead men. However, the last five Zodiacs had turned and tried desperately to make for the far end of the lagoon. After seeing the deaths of their comrades at the hands of something they would never understand, they thought a more stealthy attack might be in order.

Mendenhall turned away and sat down hard on the small outcropping of rock. He watched as the last remains of the lead boats of the assault element sank beneath the calm waters of the lagoon, never suspecting that there were survivors.

The system had performed nearly flawlessly. With the exception of the short firing cycle, which allowed the rear attack boats to escape, the laser performed as intended for the first time after over three hundred laboratory and field tests. The technicians knew they would pay for it later because the generator had shorted out (causing another fire) and the thirty-five-inch mirrored barrel had melted under the intense heat. But right now, the largest assemblage of American nerds in the air ever were jumping for joy and giving high fives until the lieutenant colonel burst out of the targeting room and yelled for them to knock it off.

"In case you just forgot, you just killed one hell of a lot of men with this fucking thing; now let's see if maybe we can still help them by getting this damned system back online to get the rest of the bad guys!"

The technicians immediately silenced as he angrily stepped back inside.

Ryan went over to the twenty field techs from Northrop-Grumman.

"Listen, they were men, but they were also bad guys and they were on their way to kill some friends of mine, and possibly a bunch of students. So take that with you when you go home. You did real good," he said and walked away.

The loudspeaker over their heads crackled. It was the commander in targeting speaking: "Okay, we had a malfunction in the fire sequence and half of the assault element was missed. They are currently grounding their craft on the far bank of the lagoon. Satellite imagery indicates they are regrouping. All our systems are down and—"

The explosion erupted out of the thickly protected generator systems room. A fireball outgassed through the thin aluminum of the 747 in a horrendous fireball. The giant aircraft was rocked as it first slammed the crew to the floor and then those that weren't strapped in into the air, as the Boeing jet lost and then gained altitude. Roaring wind swept through the interior of the aircraft as its integrity failed at almost twenty-five thousand feet, the sudden depressurization pulling fifteen of the unsecured technicians to their death through the ten-foot diameter hole.

Ryan was stunned and was close to passing out, first from hitting the floor and then from his flight to the roof of the 747 as the impact knocked the remaining oxygen from his lungs. As his eyes fluttered he could hear men shouting as they fought to control the dying aircraft and others as they reached for men sliding away toward the massive tear. Ryan's slide toward the breach was halted by a strong arm.

Suddenly he felt an oxygen mask slip over his bleeding head, and the first trickle of air as it coursed down into his windpipe while the arms were securing him to the matted flooring. He shook his head and tried to focus his eyes. The Delta sergeant was there, shaking him and trying to make the navy man stand up.

The 747 was going down. Ryan felt the nose of the great plane was at an angle that didn't lie. He saw at least two more technicians sucked out of the damaged generator section, along with papers and equipment, as the tremendous pressure bled the air out of the fuselage.

"All personnel, stand by to eject. We have a total vital systems failure of the aircraft. Delta element, when we call, 'eject, eject, eject,' blow the cargo hatch!"

"Oh, shit!" the sergeant holding up Ryan said into his oxygen mask. "Delta equipment up, prepare for HALO!"

"Oh, no," Ryan said as he staggered to his feet.

As the plane passed below 18,000 feet and the interior of the 747 stabilized somewhat, the sergeant yelled at him, "What the hell, you wanted our element on the ground anyway. Did you plan on living forever?"

Ryan started to struggle into his chute. "Well, maybe living just another year would have been nice."

Mendenhall was just starting to make his way down the steep incline when he saw the flash in the night sky above him. His jaw dropped when he saw an expanse of flame streak outward from an unseen object as it started falling from high altitude. He closed his eyes and prayed it wasn't Lieutenant Ryan and the rest of Proteus.

As the remaining crew ejection seats exploded out of the doomed 747 one and two at a time, the Delta team, with Ryan in tow, pushed the panic button of the large cargo door on the right side of the aircraft. After the brief explosion of the door, they strained and braced themselves against the blast of passing air and lined up by twos for HALO — high-altitude low-open — parachute egress. The only problem was they were becoming a low-altitude jump very fast, as the steep dive of the giant 747 became even steeper.

"Jesus Christ, what about the tail?"

"Oh, yeah, Mr. Ryan, don't hit the tail," the sergeant said loudly behind his mask. He pulled the lieutenant out of the door and into the painful slipstream.

They flew out and down like discarded paper from a fast-moving automobile. The first two-man team out of the cargo hatch flew up and over the swept-back rear stabilizer. The rest went below, luckily missing the fast-moving tonnage of aluminum. The crew, jumping with their ejection seats attached, had a much smoother exit from the plane. The Delta element would watch below and try their best to follow the 747's air force crew and remaining civilian technicians to the ground.

As they fell toward the black jungle below, they knew to a man they would land at least a half mile from the lagoon. The now fully engulfed 747, flames licking its frame like a falling meteor, slammed into the jungle three miles away, ripping a gash in the dark countryside.

Ryan watched as the top canopies of the trees rushed at him. The sergeant had explained at what altitude they would pop their chutes, but he had lost his wrist altimeter sometime during the commotion of getting the hell out of the burning plane. His gloves had been ripped from his hands in the slipstream and his fingers were frozen Popsicles. As he reached for his ripcord he knew he wasn't going to be able to pull it in time, as the ground was coming at him like an oncoming freight train and his fingers just couldn't feel the damned thing.

He closed his eyes as he waited for the bone-crushing impact that was only moments away, when he felt someone slamming a fist into his black jumpsuit. Then he heard his parachute pop, and he suddenly slowed as the black silk caught the dense air. He struggled to look above him, knowing that it had been the sergeant who had reached out and saved his life.

Ryan opened his eyes and tried desperately to get the headgear and mask off his face. The world had become a foggy, strange place from his new vantage point. He knew he was upside down because the flow of blood in his ears was pounding away as if his heart were in overdrive. The cold oxygen flowing into his mask was enough to fog the glass of his mask, and that terrified him more than anything: not being able to see just what kind of danger he was truly in.

He struggled and felt something give way above his feet where they were tangled in the black chute. He didn't want to chance using the radio that was still attached to his mask, for fear he may not be in friendly territory, which he wholeheartedly doubted he was. He heard a sharp tear in the fabric of the chute. He felt his stomach lurch as he dropped two feet farther toward the ground. He finally freed his right hand and arm, and tore the oxygen mask from his face.

Ryan breathed in the hot and humid air of the small valley. He turned his head as somewhere off in the distance he heard the call of birds and the sound of a waterfall. Then he ventured a look down and closed his eyes. He was no more than three feet off the forest floor. It was a miracle — he had hit one of the few open spots within a quarter mile of the lagoon. He quickly fought out of his harness and released himself from his upside-down personal hell. He hit ground on his shoulders as his feet tangled in the harness at the last moment, and he managed to knock the wind from his lungs.

"Nice one, Mr. Ryan." The whispered voice came out of the darkness somewhere to his front.

Ryan eased his hand to his holstered nine-millimeter Berretta.

"Easy, Lieutenant, easy, I'm a good guy. But be careful, there are some of the other fellas around here; I saw them as we came in. Now come on, we got some friends we have to get out of some trees."

Ryan watched as Sergeant Jim Flannery slowly came out of the bush, rubbing greasepaint on his exposed features. He finished and tossed the tube to Ryan.

"Black up, Lieutenant."

"Have you seen anyone else?" Ryan asked as he painted his face.

"Not yet, but when we do I sure as hell hope they came down with more equipment than I did. I lost everything except my peashooter."

Ryan knew he was talking about the same weapon he himself had, a lousy nine-millimeter, which wasn't too damned good for fending off heavy weapons.

The Delta sergeant easily placed his chute harness and helmet within the bush and left them. He placed a black and green do-rag on his head and winked at Ryan.

"Well, I guess we start our defense of the lagoon from here. Let's get the rest of the cavalry."

Ryan nodded; his eyes were the only part of his body visible in the darkness of the jungle surrounding them.

"Right, I guess Proteus has just gone back to Operation Conquistador," he mumbled as he took up station behind the more experienced Delta man.

"I guess you can say that. Let's just hope we find one hell of a lot more conquistadors than we have right now."

"Yeah, like maybe a couple with real weapons."

The sergeant nodded in agreement, and the two men set out to find the rest of the doomed Operation Proteus team.

24

The first turn in the canal almost did them in as the boat slammed hard into the wall and the fifteen souls inside careened around in the large treasure boat. The current was picking up speed as more and more water slammed them from behind. The dam had completely broken free above them, and they now found themselves traveling at breakneck speed toward a dark and unknown death.

As Jack tried to focus as water cascaded over him, he ventured a look up from the front of the boat. The darkness was once again becoming shaded green. The Incan designers had embedded large stones of tritium ore in the walls to illuminate the treasure trail. At least now he could vaguely see the turn in the system that would smash them to splinters. Jack knew they had to try and control their descent somehow.

He addressed the panicked faces. "Look, we have to start shifting weight in this—" The boat careered against another turn and Jack was awash with water as the boat bounced into another canal and slipped down an even steeper causeway. He regained his sitting position and held onto the sides. "Watch me. When I raise my right hand, everyone crowd to the right side and vice versa, or we're going to wind up hitting a wall at fifty miles an hour."

He didn't wait for anyone to nod or comment; he just turned and faced the front. Carl would have to control them in the back.

In the dim light, the major saw another turn coming and this one went left. He held up his left arm and yelled, although over the roar of water no one could hear him: "Shift, now!"

Carl jumped to the left side and pulled Robby along with him. The others upon seeing this repeated the movement; most seemed to fall on the master chief, who again howled.

Jack braced himself as the boat started to slide to the left, too late he saw the weight wasn't sufficient enough to make the turn. The boat slipped and slid into the curving wall. It hit with such force that he was tossed from the boat. He hung on to its side for dear life as it started to gather momentum once again. Sarah was there in an instant and was joined by Kelly. Together, they helped the major back into the vessel.

"Thanks, I—"

The canal shaft was brilliantly lit up by the flare of gunfire as rounds slammed into the walls around them. Jack looked back and saw Farbeaux had jumped into another boat along with Mendez and one other man. They were traveling light, so they had less weight to control. Another burst of fire nearly caught him before Jack had time to get into the bottom of the boat.

With no control, the boat gathered speed and slammed into the next turn. It struck the wall so hard that it tipped to the right and then spun on its blunt bow. Now they were traveling backward. More bullets were fired and Jack heard one of the students cry out in pain.

He rose and fired his nine-millimeter back toward the onrushing boat. He saw Farbeaux's eyes widen before the Frenchman slammed himself into the bottom. One of Jack's rounds caught Mendez in the shoulder, and he saw him spin and collapse below the gunwale. Just as he took aim again, another turn rocked him to the side. This time they all heard the crack of wood as the boat began to split in two. Water started rushing through the gap as it started to come apart.

"We've had it, Jack!" Carl called out.

"Everyone grab onto someone and—" It was too late, as he started to speak the boat broke into two pieces and all fifteen people went into the roaring canal.

The water was deep and unlike rapids. Jack knew they could survive if they just paid attention. Another turn was quickly upon them as the water brought them around a corner. A young woman sped by Jack and went under. He quickly reached out and grabbed a handful of hair and pulled her up and back to him, as they both hit the wall and were raised up into the air as it curled around the curve.

Farbeaux held on as his own boat made the curve and came out in the midst of the current-tossed survivors. He watched in horror as the remaining Colombian in the front of his boat took aim at two students struggling to stay afloat to his right. He knew he couldn't react in time.

"Save your ammunition for those who can fight back, fool!" he shouted.

He could see the man was going to shoot anyway. Farbeaux was furious but was also powerless to stop him as a sudden roar, louder than even the rushing water, sounded in the canal shaft. The man was pulled into the water by a large webbed hand, and then the vessel seemed to hit a submerged object. Farbeaux and Mendez found themselves airborne. They hit the water. Both were close to panic as they realized one of the animals was in the canal with them.

Together seventeen men and women were on a ride none of them could have ever imagined. The canal system was becoming steeper and the turns not as numerous as they traveled down the pyramid that got wider at its base.

Jack tried to rein in as many as he could, yelling for each to hang on to the next, to form a chain that would allow them to travel the current together. Without notice, the water spilled over a small fall and now they were all airborne. Carl held the master chief one moment and then lost him as Jenks's own weight tore him from his grasp. They hit the water on the next level and all went under. When Carl surfaced he saw the master chief only feet away, grimacing in pain as Virginia splashed toward them. It was that movement that told Carl they had passed into light. As he looked back he saw that the fall of water they had come over had sent them into a tunnel, a tunnel that led them to a place they had been before.

"Look!" cried one of the sputtering students.

They were entering the main chamber. Teacher was there, still smashed on the staircase leading from this very canal.

"I'll be damned," Carl said and slapped the slowing current as he watched Jack ahead, already helping students out of the water and onto the stone staircase. "That was one hell of a ride!"

"What did you do to my boat!" the master chief cried out as he floated out of the cave.

The Delta team was complete. It had taken close to twenty minutes to locate them all and another ten to get four Delta and air force personnel down and out of the high trees where they'd landed. At least they had been able to hang onto three coils of rope. They took stock as they reached the lagoon's south end. The five Zodiacs were just starting out. Altogether, to stop them, the men had at their disposal thirteen nine-millimeter Beretta handguns, two Ingram assault weapons with only one extra thirty-round clip, and one M-14 sniper rifle with no extra ammunition.

"Hope you boys have a plan that calls for throwing rocks when we run out of boom-boom," the air force colonel said as he knelt beside two injured airmen.

"Even with what we have, it won't be much against those fifties mounted in those Zodiacs," the Delta sergeant said.

"Come on, guys, we have to make sure those boats don't get to the other side," Ryan said anxiously.

"That's what we plan on doing, Mr. Ryan, but we only have so much fire-power to accomplish that mission," Delta Sergeant Melendez said. "Look, I hate to say this, but our opening salvo can't be kill shots; we have to first slow and then stop the Zodiacs. Punch as many holes in 'em as we can. We're going to take one hell of a lot of return fire. Discipline, gentlemen, discipline."

The thirteen men gathered around nodded their understanding.

"Okay, two-man firing teams: my people pair up with the blue birds and I'll take Ryan. Boats first, assholes second, got it? Wait till my fire, then let all hell break loose."

The men paired up without comment and started to file into the dense terrain.

As the makeshift rescue force moved out, they failed to see the small Indian who went right to the spot the men had been only moments before. The mud-covered man raised a small whistle to his bone-pierced lips and lightly tooted, imitating one of the many Amazonian birds perfectly. As he did, the jungle started filling with the not-so-lost tribe of Sincaro, and they moved off silently, following the Americans.

Everett swam to the right side of the cave opening. He waved at Jack and the two men made eye contact. The major knew exactly what Carl was up to. Jack shot the lieutenant commander a sloppy salute, then reached out and helped the others pull the master chief from the water and onto the stone steps.

"Look at my boat," Jenks wailed.

Carl waited. As he did so, he pulled his last clip of ammunition from his rear pocket and ejected the empty from the Berretta. He inserted the new one with no time to spare as the two men came sputtering out of the cave. Farbeaux was first as he tried to hold the heavier Mendez up. The fat man wasn't trying to assist the Frenchman in the least; he only held his wounded arm. Farbeaux saw Carl immediately and continued on. Carl followed.

Jack was there with the rest of the survivors and even helped Mendez to the steps. As the Colombian collapsed, Jack held out a hand to Farbeaux and the Frenchman took it.

"Major, you amaze me no end. Your calculated risk seemed to have paid off; unfortunately, I'm afraid it was for nothing, unless of course you managed among your other miraculous activities to have disarmed a certain war-head in your mad rush down the feeder canals."

"Afraid not, Colonel."

Farbeaux found footing on the steps and collapsed in exhaustion. "A shame," was all he said as he lay back against the stone beneath the legs of Supay.

Carl held Farbeaux and Mendez at gunpoint. The Colombian had offered the American everything this side of the moon to set him free. But Carl and even Farbeaux laughed at the attempt. They followed Jack and the others up the stone stairway and into the brighter chamber lights they had set up before.

Jack and Virginia found a smooth spot in the floor and lay the grumbling master chief down. He immediately slapped Jack's hands away. The major stood up, wondering where Sanchez, Danielle, and Ellenshaw were. He didn't have to wait long. He heard a sound and the professor stumbled out from behind the wall of supplies. Jack reached for his nine-millimeter just as Heidi, her head bandaged and still bleeding, came next, supported by Danielle and Sanchez. Then came a man Jack didn't know. He was dressed in a wetsuit, the same as himself and Carl. The stranger had a lethal-looking handgun pointed at the head of Heidi Rodriguez.

"You will release Senor Mendez, or this woman will be the first to be blown apart," the man said menacingly in accented English.

"I would do as he says, Major; he is rather an unsavory character," Farbeaux said as he advanced and slowly removed Jack's handgun.

With his good arm, Mendez relieved the lieutenant commander of his weapon and then slammed Carl in the face. The navy man didn't go down; he just wiped the blood from his nose and mouth, and gave the fat man a strange smile.

The others reacted with cries to the assault on Carl but Jack held up a hand, stopping them from moving. Robby was pulled back by Kelly, who watched the scene with dawning horror.

"Sorry, Major, this dick came out of nowhere," Sanchez said as he was silenced by a shove in the back.

The man motioned for Carl to get closer to Jack so he could keep them both in his line of sight.

"Why don't you let Sanchez help Dr. Rodriguez, Danielle, so you can join your partner?" Jack said as Sarah and Carl raised their eyebrows.

Danielle looked at Jack, and then at Carl, knowing it was he who had found her out.

"You three knew?" she asked as she let Heidi's arm drop. Robby rushed over to help Sanchez as Ellenshaw sat hard on the floor.

Jack looked at his watch and remained silent. Twenty minutes.

"Yes, our boss is just a tad smarter than you gave him credit for. Director Compton never believed your story for one minute, especially after Commander Everett here saw your tan line on the George Washington, which sent Dr. Compton off investigating."

Danielle closed her eyes, then reached down and fingered the spot on her ring finger. It had once held her wedding ring, whose recent presence had left a clear mark of untanned skin beneath.

Farbeaux laughed. He stepped forward and put his arm around Danielle and brought her close to him.

"I told you they would be hard to fool, my dear."

She shrugged out of his embrace and looked at Captain Rosolo.

"It took everything I had to convince this maniac not to murder us all," she said as she took a menacing step toward Rosolo.

Mendez, still holding his arm, stepped forward and aimed the gun he had taken from Carl at the French couple. "Stop or I will shoot you," said Mendez to Farbeaux. "Now I have two reasons to kill you, senor, for lying to me about the dangerous mineral, and now to find your supposed ex-wife, who seems to still be very much connected to you, very devious."

Jack was watching Rosolo. The weapon he held was of an obscure Russian make, a Malfutrov fifty-caliber. There was a running joke in American Special Forces that named the weapon the Malfunction for its proclivity to misfire after being dunked in water. As Jack watched, a small drop of water fell from the handgrip where the weapon's ammunition clip was stored. It was something that gave him hope.

"It is time to leave this place," Farbeaux said as he turned Danielle toward the stairs. "In case you have forgotten, there's a rather nasty little device floating around somewhere."

"I agree, senor. But you will remain here with the Americans."

Farbeaux turned to look at Mendez. The barrel of the Berretta was pointed right at him.

"Please remove the gun from your belt," commanded Mendez.

Farbeaux flashed a significant look at Carl, who began to prepare himself.

"My man, Captain Rosolo, will shoot everyone here if you do not comply." Mendez looked over at the major. "I'm sure he would very much like to complete what he failed to do in Montana."

Jack half smiled and asked Rosolo, "That was you?"

"Yes, you can be assured the mission would not have failed if I had been on the ground and not in the air," the thin man said as he took a quick step over to his left. He snatched Sarah away from Jack's side and placed the gun to her head and fired.

Captain Santos chomped on his cigar as he throttled the Rio Madonna forward. He knew certain places where the shallow draft riverboat could penetrate the rapids, and he steered toward the first. His men were hung onto the gunwales and surveyed the rushing waters out ahead of them as he steered the large boat to the left. He had released the equipment barge back on the river and beached it as he had started his run. He cursed as the bottom came out of nowhere; the Rio Madonna lifted free of the water momentarily and then slammed back down.

The moment to act was upon him and his boat, and it was time to earn his rather bloated financial rewards. He knew he would only have moments to get to the lagoon and stop the people he was being paid to stop.

As he successfully turned away from one of the more hazardous rocks in the rapids, he ventured a hand from the old wheel and felt for the necklace in his shirt. He pressed his fingers around the round object inside just as the Rio Madonna smashed into another hidden rock along her run for the lagoon.

The firing pin clicked and Sarah flinched at the suddenness of her nondeath. Jack reacted first, Carl and Farbeaux next. The latter grabbed the failed weapon at the same time Sarah realized she was still alive and swerved away. Farbeaux dove and at the same time tossed Carl the weapon he had removed from his waistband. He fired and took Mendez in the head. The fat man fell to the floor, right on top of the master chief.

Jack had the gun before Rosolo knew what had happened. The captain took a swing at him with the side of his palm and missed, as the major ducked away, came up a foot to Rosolo's left, and cuffed him in the side of the head.

Carl extended Farbeaux's gun toward him and Danielle. The lieutenant commander didn't bother to look at the struggle between Jack and Rosolo. In his opinion, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Rosolo had made a very serious mistake with Jack: he had tried to kill Sarah.

Rosolo had gone into a jujitsu stance and Jack smiled. The students who didn't know his capabilities started hollering for Jack as the two men squared off. As Rosolo brought his palms up, Jack did just the opposite; he lowered his arms and circled the captain. As Rosolo lunged, Jack easily sidestepped the open palm and then elbowed Rosolo across the bridge of his nose, shattering the bone and sending an explosive arch of shrapnel made up of cartilage and bone fragments into the captain's brain, dropping him to the stone floor like a rag doll.

The students were stunned. Everett tilted his head at Farbeaux and Danielle. "Doesn't pay to piss Jack off, does it?"

Virginia was just standing and watching. Never in her life had she witnessed such a quick death as what she had just seen.

Jack turned and faced everyone. His eyes were mere slits and it took a moment for him to come out of the semitrance he was in. Then all at once his vision cleared and he saw Sarah.

"You all right?" he asked as he broke his self-induced spell and started forward toward the group of students.

Sarah didn't move at first, she just swallowed and nodded her head, stunned at the sudden change of predicament.

"Come on, people, move, we have to get out of here. Sanchez, get Heidi into the water. Commander Everett, cut those two loose, we don't have time right now."

Carl lowered the weapon but was tempted to raise it again and put a bullet in Farbeaux's brain. But he was stayed by the fact that he didn't murder.

"Until the next time, Henri," he said as he left the couple and ran to help get the late Mendez off the master chief.

Farbeaux pulled Danielle roughly, for some reason angry at himself for doing what he was about to do. He thought he must be insane for feeling this way.

"Come, my dear, time to leave."

"We cannot let them live — they know about us. I could never go home again."

"That doesn't matter; their director knows about you anyway and, if I know Compton, he'll hunt you down for our small deceit. Now, we must get out."

Danielle was shocked beyond measure as she stumbled along in his hard grip. If she didn't know any better, she could swear she saw remorse on his face. Or was it guilt?

As Farbeaux approached the spot on the staircase just below the height of the dock where Teacher lay grounded, the rising water had belched up one more surprise. There, floating against her stern where the water was starting to lap, was the aluminum case. The weapon had survived intact its journey down the canal. Farbeaux slid to a stop, losing his footing and dragging Danielle down on top of him.

"What are you doing?" she screamed.

"The weapon."

She looked and saw the container as the rising water around Teacher bumped it again and again between its twin thrusters.

"We have to get out!" Danielle cried.

Farbeaux quickly made a decision. He reached around and removed his satchel; the strap holding it slid off his shoulder. He opened it and took out the heavy Geiger counter, which he tossed away to smash against the stone steps. He then took the satchel and crossed the strap over Danielle's head.

"Take it and go. I'll meet you on the river, by the rapids." He leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. "Now go."

"What…what are you doing?"

"I can't live with the fact that I helped kill those young people, I have to help this Collins get rid of the device." He roughly pushed her away as he stood and ran for the rapidly disappearing Teacher.

Danielle watched him for a moment, then stood and made for the canal and the now-vanishing opening that led out of El Dorado. She took a last look at her husband, adjusted the satchel that contained the plutonium, and then turned and dove into the rushing water.

As Jack helped Sanchez with Heidi, Ellenshaw was the first to see the Frenchman as they breached the top of the dock and staircase.

"Look," he said, pointing.

Jack saw it immediately: Farbeaux was struggling with a yellow anodized aluminum case that could only be one thing, the nuclear weapon. He was trying to bring it to the vanishing staircase but couldn't get the momentum he needed to fight the speedy current.

"Professor, take Heidi and make for the opening," Jack said as he handed Heidi off and ran down the stone steps. He jumped feet first into the current, splashed his way to the Frenchman, and helped get the case to the first step out of the water.

"You wanna steal this, too," Jack quipped as they collapsed against the case.

"Do you always joke upon the moment of your imminent death, Major?"

Jack didn't answer, as he was watching everyone dive into the water and start swimming toward the falls. He saw Robby try to help Kelly, and her slap his hands away and dive into the water. Virginia and two of the students had the master chief around the neck and were dogpaddling toward the now-submerged opening. Then he noticed a shadow fall on him.

"You two get the hell out of here," he said, looking up into the faces of Carl and Sarah.

"Not happening, Jack. I think we've been through this before," Carl said as he reached down and pulled the major up. Then he grimaced and helped Farbeaux also.

Sarah just held up a hand when Jack turned on her. "Save it, Jack, we're wasting time."

"The thing is, Lieutenant, I'm all out of ideas," Jack said as he looked down at the case.

They heard shouts and looked up and toward the canal. Just before the master chief's head went under the water they heard him.

"Did I hear right?" Farbeaux asked.

Sarah, Carl, and Jack looked at each other and said it at the same time.

"Turtle!"

Delta Sergeant Melendez unscrewed the cylindrical silencer mounted on the barrel of his nine-millimeter. He patted Ryan's shoulder and winked at him. Then he raised the weapon and took aim on the lead Zodiac that was already twenty feet from shore. The black rubber glimmered with wetness just as the first brightness of morning turned the blackness of the night into an almost even blacker sunrise as it filtered through the canopy at the center of the lagoon.

Just as the sergeant started to squeeze the trigger, screams and shouts filled the night air from the direction of the falls. The lead boat opened up with the heavy thump of its fifty-caliber machine gun, momentarily blinding the men taking aim on shore. Melendez took a deep breath and fired five times in quick succession. The first four bullets found the hard rubber of the first Zodiac, and the fifth struck the man operating the heavy weapon, dropping him into the murky water. Because of the people in the water, Melendez had disobeyed his own orders about boats first, bad guys second.

"Oops, last one missed the fucking boat," the sergeant said as the other teams opened fire.

Ryan wanted to smile at the remark but didn't as bullets flew out of the jungle and caught the assault teams in the boats off guard. Several men, more than likely Delta, let fly and hit several of the other machine gunners, dropping them also. One of the heavy-caliber weapons managed to swing around and open fire. It was like hell opened up around the men onshore. They dove to take cover as the large rounds struck trees and plants around them, forcing them down. One airmen and one of the Delta men cried out as large pieces of tree trunk and bark struck them. It wasn't long before another of the attackers' fifties found them and started laying waste to their hiding places. Ryan figured it would only be a matter of moments before their protective cover was down to nothing.

The men, each in turn, would stand and fire quickly and then duck. Ryan heard the M-14 sniper weapon open fire with six quick and sure shots, dropping four of the men that were arrogantly standing inside the rear craft. Then another loud burst of two more fifty-calibers strafed the area immediately to their right, and this time there were accompanying screams of pain as some of the deadly projectiles found their mark.

Ryan was following Melendez when he suddenly reached out and grabbed the soldier's boot.

"Listen," he said loudly.

As the sergeant stopped and tried to hear over the continuous gun battle, he thought he heard a long blow of a ship's whistle.

"It's an engine," Ryan yelled over the din. He quickly ventured a look up and over some elephant ear plants. "Goddamn, look at that!"

As both men looked on, an ancient-looking river tug came careering down the rapids and then entered the calmer lagoon as if its pilot had done it a hundred times before.

"I think the bad guys just got reinforced," the sergeant said, as he placed his last clip of nine-millimeter rounds into his automatic.

As Ryan grimaced, looking down at his own handgun with the slide all the way back, indicating it was empty, a bright red flare fired from the boat. His momentary hopes had been dashed by the sergeant. He had hoped it was some navy fellas coming to their rescue.

As the flare hit its apex, over a hundred arrows suddenly arched into the sky with a sound none of the Americans had ever heard before. Then they heard the thumping of large sticks as they pounded against hollow logs, a deep drumming that was absolutely frightening. Then the attackers in the Zodiacs started screaming as the volley of arrows hit them. As Jason Ryan started to stand up, he felt the sharpened end of a stick press against his back as the screams of the dying filled the darkened air around the killing field.

The Sincaro had arrived to take back their Garden of Eden.

As they struggled with the yellow case, trying desperately to get it inside Teacher, the very canal shaft they had come down earlier had filled to the point where it could no longer withstand the pressure. The outer walls lining the cave opening gave way. Ten million gallons of water that could no longer be restrained by mere stone cascaded into the open chamber. The rush smashed into Teacher and sent her sideways, slamming into the dock. Jack, Carl, Sarah, and Farbeaux were almost snatched away, but all held on thanks to a jagged opening they had the container wedged into. Teacher once again began to take on water as she settled hard, awash against the legs of the great statue of Supay.

"Push it in; we have five minutes till detonation," Jack called out as he doubled his efforts at trying to fit a square peg into a round opening. They were all losing footing as the chamber filled. None could touch the staircase as they and Teacher rose above the dock.

The ancient stone supporting Supay started to crumble from the wash of water. It was Carl who heard the first loud crack and rumble as part of the left leg of the great statue gave way and fell into the swirling water.

"Oh great, come on, come on," he said as they shoved harder.

"Damn!" Jack shouted as he stopped shoving suddenly and started pulling.

"What are you doing, Major?" Farbeaux cried as he tried to restrain Jack.

The major didn't answer, and finally pulled the case free. As it hit the water, another loud crack was sounded inside the chamber as the entire left leg of Supay crumbled into the race of water. Teacher was floating on a prayer as her forward spaces took on more and more water. Sarah screamed. The giant statue had started to fall backward toward the canal.

"Oh, this isn't happening," Carl called out as he saw what was going to be the result.

The statue hit the water with the force of an exploding fifteen-inch naval gun. Teacher, along with the four people, was pushed farther into the interior of El Dorado. Then Supay did what Carl had hoped it wouldn't. It plugged the opening to the falls like a cork in a bottle. Once the great stone statue had settled, wedged into the canal, the water started rising at a tremendous rate.

Jack had lost Sarah when Teacher had been picked up by the crashing wave, and Carl was no longer with him and Farbeaux. He could only hope they hadn't been crushed by the boat's heavy hull. Instead of worrying about it, he grabbed the case he had hung on to for dear life and snapped open the latches. He opened the container and he saw they had three minutes left. He removed the weapon from the case and not too gently tossed it into the damaged space in Teacher's engineering compartment.

"Damn, why didn't I think of taking it out of the case!" said the Frenchman.

Jack didn't hear the question as he quickly swam into the opening and disappeared. Farbeaux quickly followed.

Outside the hull, Sarah finally surfaced after being pummeled by the wave left in Supay's wake. She bumped into Carl as he, too, surfaced not two feet from her. They both swam for the stern of Teacher, which had begun to stick up in the air. She was going down by the bow at a fast rate of speed. Carl got to the opening first, and reached up and grabbed on. He tried in vain to pull himself up but the part of the composite hull he was hanging on to gave way and he went back down into the water, narrowly missing Sarah.

"Forget it, her ass is riding too high," he shouted over the roar of the water. The chamber was filling quickly. "Jack, we're losing her!" Carl just hoped the major heard him.

Inside Teacher, Jack was not only fighting with the bomb to get it inside the now-dangling Turtle, he was fighting with Teacher herself as gravity started to take effect. The boat now started to go down by the nose.

"Hold the canopy up, Colonel," Jack shouted.

Farbeaux grabbed the Plexiglas canopy and held it in place as Jack fitted the stainless-steel weapon into the front seat. The major then pulled himself toward the back, reached into the cockpit, and gave a quick prayer that the electrical system hadn't shorted out. He flipped the switch and was rewarded with the control lights coming on like a Christmas tree. He didn't hesitate as he reached for the keyboard on the small computer set deep inside the panel. He quickly switched on the autopilot, activated the computer, and tapped in a depth of ten feet, which was what he estimated the cave opening to now be under water by. When he was prompted, he set a speed of forty-five knots, the maximum speed of the small craft. He ignored the computer prompts for oxygen output and other nonessentials. A warning flashed that told him at the speed setting he had selected the maximum amount of dive time was only three minutes. He ignored that, as well, and programmed his course, praying that he had the setting right or the damned thing would come back on them. He closed the canopy and it snapped shut.

"Carl!"

"Yeah," the lieutenant commander answered from outside.

"This thing's going to fall free; make sure her nose is pointed in the right direction when she hits the water."

Jack didn't wait for an answer as he reached over and hit Turtle's cradle release. As he did so, the doors beneath it swung open with an explosive sound. When Turtle was released, the men cringed as its angle smashed the small craft into the opening on her way out of Teacher. Jack and Farbeaux sighed with relief as the sub cleared the doors.

"We'd better go, Colonel."

"I agree," was all the Frenchman said in answer as he quickly swam for the hole in Teacher's hull.

Turtle hit the water, almost decapitating Sarah as its high-speed jets started up before it hit the water. Carl braved death by reaching out and pushing Turtle's nose toward the canal and the spot where the inner cave had been before it had gone under. The water jets pushed against the water and Turtle shot outward toward what looked like a solid rock wall. Then it slowly went beneath the surface.

"Okay, let's swim for it," Carl shouted at Sarah just as Jack and Farbeaux surfaced beside them.

As one, they broke for the Supay statue that had totally clogged the opening. They dove deeply. Farbeaux was the first to see the small gap where Supay's pointed ear lay against the stone opening. There was a gap of about two and a half feet. He just hoped they had the time to squeeze through.

Meanwhile, Turtle hurtled through the cave's opening. The setting for her depth had been miscalculated; the canopy struck the top of the mouth of the cave and cracked. As water started to seep in, the aroma of electrical ozone and smoke began to fill the unoccupied compartment of Turtle. The sub entered the canal system and started to climb.

Farbeaux surfaced first and looked around for the others. Sarah popped up, and then Carl.

Jack felt himself grabbed from below and pushed upward. He was grateful for the help as he started to rise. When he broke free to the surface of the lagoon he looked over and had to smile as Will Mendenhall came up next to him, sputtering and spitting out water.

"Good to see you, Lieutenant," Jack said.

"Saw you were a little slow coming up there, Major."

The new second lieutenant had just reached the level of the lagoon after climbing down from the cliff face, when he saw the others come to the surface but not Jack. He dove in after him.

"Let's get the hell out of here!"

Just as Jack said the words, a deep rumbling sounded from all directions. High up where the falls originated, a massive waterspout shot straight up into the air and then the side of the cliff face exploded outward. All the survivors still in the water ducked under, in the hope that the tremendous quantity of debris would somehow miss them. Jack stayed afloat as missiles shot in all directions, but he just had to see, to make sure. He felt Farbeaux next to him.

As they watched, the giant Incan pyramid of El Dorado began to collapse from the inside. The falls, mountainside, and cliff face started to fall inward as the thermonuclear weapon melted stone from within. The weakened stone walls dissolved under the massive attack of gamma rays and fell in.

The witnesses to the death of the legendary El Dorado would never forget how the mine died with an ear-shattering bellow, as the entire northern end of the lagoon collapsed in on itself. The bomb took down a pyramid that had been constructed by ancient man to withstand a tremendous force equal to up to ten tons of TNT.

Farbeaux looked at Jack and not a word was uttered. The Frenchman raised his hand in a halfhearted salute, then turned and swam away. The major watched him go, more confused than ever about the Event Group's most-feared adversary.

"We let him go, Jack."

Collins turned toward Carl, Mendenhall, and Sarah, who were treading water close by.

"This time, he earned it. We'll see him again."

Carl was about to say something when a new sound entered his ears. They turned as one to see a most welcome sight.

It was large and looked like the boat they had seen the day the marines had dropped them off at the tributary, which seemed like years ago now. The men who now lined the rails were beginning to pull the survivors of Teacher and the Zachary expedition from the lagoon. At the bow, a large, heavy-set man in a filthy white shirt, and with a thick five- or six-day growth of beard, stood with a leg propped up on the gunwale. Even from their poor vantage point they could see he was looking straight at them. Jack, Mendenhall, Everett, and Sarah started to swim toward the oncoming boat.

As the boat's engine chugged to a stop only feet from the four swimmers, the man at the bow smiled and removed his cigar.

"You are in distress, gentlemen, oh, and lady?" he asked, a smile evident on his dark features.

Jack spit out a mouthful of water. "Nah, just…" He stopped. He didn't feel like joking; he was beat and worried about his people. He remembered this man's picture from the list of qualified river captains he had originally gazed over, back at the Group complex. He knew what to call him because most of the captains on the list had the same last name. "Captain Santos, isn't it?"

"Si, Capitan Ernesto Santos at your service," he said as he replaced the cigar in his mouth and half bowed toward the four floating Americans.

"Pull us up, Captain, and let's talk business," Jack said as he swam the last few feet to the boat and helped the others secure the dangling cargo net.

Farbeaux gingerly pulled himself out of the water and looked back at the spot where the students and event personnel were being rescued.

The Frenchman saw large bubbles as something swam toward shore and then quickly turned away. He watched as the bubbles diminished. Whatever it was turned around and swam back toward the center of the lagoon, then Farbeaux wanted to look no more. He weighed his options as he watched Santos and his men start picking up the Americans. He decided he and Danielle would take their chances in the forest after the rapids.

As he started to turn away, he saw something floating at the lagoon's edge. He blinked when he recognized what it was. His vision blurred as his heart sank at the sight. He stepped to the water's edge and pulled out the satchel he had strapped onto Danielle. He turned the weightless bag over. His eyes widened when he saw the claw marks that had shredded the thick material. He touched the edges and saw that the marks had wicked up fresh blood. He slowly let the empty satchel fall from his hands as he went to his knees in the fine sand of the lagoon's bank.

He stayed that way, kneeling and looking at the water, for many moments, beating himself. His wife had been killed. Why had he helped the Americans? He closed his eyes and then looked at the now-collapsed El Dorado. Then his eyes went to the Rio Madonna as it picked out the last of the survivors. His eyes narrowed as they focused on the last man pulled out. Jack Collins.

At that moment, the mind of Henri Farbeaux snapped as he took in Collins. He no longer blamed himself for his momentary burst of generosity that had cost his dear wife's life. The person responsible was right there in front of him. Major Jack Collins.

Farbeaux slowly stood and turned toward the jungle. He started walking. Walking and thinking of how he was going to get even with the people who had fooled him into thinking he was human.

Colonel Henri Farbeaux walked into the jungle where he would be as one with the other animals, because that was what he had become in his instantaneous insanity. An animal.

Jack was the last to be manhandled off the cargo net as Captain Santos ordered the Rio Madonna to the opposite shore. Sarah, Carl, and Mendenhall were safe among the others. The students all looked his way in silent thanks; that was as much as their sorrow and fatigue would allow them. They knew it had been the four people before them who had saved everyone from being stranded in the mine just as Helen Zachary and a lot of their friends had been.

The major now located Virginia — and a scowling master chief, sitting by the wheelhouse in silence. Then he reached out to Sarah and half smiled as he took her hand.

"I didn't exactly get them all out, did I…" he began.

Sarah turned on him and looked him right in the eye. "Don't even start with that crap, Jack. You did all you could; the result is right before your eyes. Ten kids will see home again because of you."

Just beyond her, Carl nodded his head, agreeing with Sarah.

Jack, Sarah, Virginia, and Carl stood at the bow and looked at the falls, which had been reduced to only sixty feet from their tumble to the lagoon. Three hundred feet of mountaintop had collapsed in on El Dorado, enough tonnage to keep the plutonium and gold away from the hands of man for many decades.

The lagoon itself was silent again as life sounds returned to the rain forest around them.

"I guess Farbeaux would have made off with enough uranium to guarantee we would all be scared to death for the next fifty years," Virginia said, as the captain of Rio Madonna gave orders for getting under way.

"No, his plan would have ended right here," Jack said.

"What do you mean?" she asked, as Santos turned and smiled at the gathered Americans, his cigar freshly lit.

"Our friend here," said Jack, nodding toward Captain Santos, "would have killed anyone involved with the mine as soon as they returned to his boat. Hell, he may still be planning to kill everyone."

Sarah didn't follow this. "What makes you say that?"

"Because it's his job," Jack answered, staring at Santos. "Captain, would you mind joining us, please?"

Santos stepped over and removed his cigar from his mouth. "Si, senor? "

"Captain, you can knock off the peasant act now and show these ladies your jewelry," Jack said, smiling.

"Act? No, senor, I am a peasant of the river," he said as he reached into his shirt and drew out his necklace. He kissed the object on it, as he always did. Then he smiled and held it out so the two women could see his proudest possession.

"A papal medal of the Order of St. Patrick," Virginia said, astonished.

"Si, it has been mine for twenty-three years. Starting with my ancestors many years ago; our passion for the pope has continued through my bloodline. It has been our responsibility to ensure that the world shall never benefit from Padilla's discoveries. To make sure no one ever goes beyond the borders of the river and her surrounding sisters," he said as he dropped the medal back into his sweat-stained shirt, then he struck a match to his dead cigar. "My pleasure in life has been safeguarding Eden from men and women such as…"

"Us," Sarah said, comprehending at last.

Santos smiled as his cigar glowed to life. "Si, senora, people such as you."

"Captain Santos and his family were listed by Europa as having been awarded the first medals back in 1865, your great-great-grandfather, I believe," Jack said as he remembered the papal medalist list he had studied after Niles had hit on Keogh's name in Virginia.

"Si, this is true. You are surely a man with great knowledge, and I must assume you would not be easily disposed of, senor?"

"No need; we are going to make sure El Dorado remains just a myth, a place where legends go to die," Jack said, looking the captain straight in the eye.

Santos didn't say anything, but just nodded and puffed on his cigar. Then he briefly looked toward the collapsed mine that was hidden behind the waterfalls. The waters allowed only wisps of smoke to escape from the devastation inside.

"It must get tiresome out here all alone," Virginia said.

Santos laughed heartily as the Rio Madonna's engines came to life and the old boat made for the far shoreline. "Alone? No, I have my loyal crew and all of this," he said. He looked up into the bridge and gave an up-and-down motion with his fist. The boat's whistle sounded loudly in the silence of the valley.

Santos laughed as he looked up along the lip of the extinct volcano. Then Jack and the others heard chanting, almost a gentle song as sung by hundreds of people. They looked at the spot Santos was indicating and saw that the edge of the caldera was lined with Sincaro who stood watching the boat as it chugged its way out of the center of the lagoon.

Professor Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III broke away from the other survivors and held a hand to his bandaged head when he saw the ancient people of this lost valley. He began to cry for Professor Keating, who had died before he could see the prehistoric success story now unfolding before them. The Sincaro had taken everything the outside world could throw at them, be they Inca, Spanish, or modern man, and it was they who God allowed the sole ownership of Eden.

"It is a hard life, but my friends up there and not El Dorado is why we have always done this service for our pope. Not gold, not strange minerals." He turned and looked at the major. "This place is truly Eden, but it does have a few snakes that will protect it at all costs."

A large group of Sincaro watched from the sandy beach as the Rio Madonna dropped anchor on the eastern shore of the lagoon. Santos hummed the very tune of the Sincaro as he stepped to the gunwale. He gestured for Jack, Carl, Sarah, and Mendenhall to join him.

"I have it in my power to kill all of you. It is within my right to do so," he slowly explained without one iota of accent to his English. He turned away from the shore and the jungle beyond, to address the Americans, his face a death mask of seriousness. Then he smiled a sad sort of smile, replaced his cigar in the corner of his mouth, and tilted his filthy saucer cap back on his black hair. "But I think you have acted honorably in this place, as others have not. Those that have not are now a part of the legend of the valley, si?"

"Yes," Jack answered as he heard noise coming from the bush.

"Good. Now, I think you may have lost something of yours in the jungle, senor. You may have them back. My friends the Sincaro are quite finished with them."

As Jack and the others followed his eyes to the shore of the lagoon, the bushes parted and an even larger party of Sincaro came forward, marching in a straight line. Jack smiled when he saw who they had in tow, tied with hands behind his back and strung along like a dog on a leash, but very much unharmed.

"Hey, guys, what's up?" Jason Ryan asked with his boyish grin. It quickly became a grimace when a small spear was probed into his lower back. The Sincaro chattered something in their own tongue as they herded him and the thirteen survivors from Operation Proteus forward. "Think we could get a lift out of here?" Ryan flinched and looked back at the miniature man pointing the stick behind him.

Half an hour later, after Ryan and the Delta and air force personnel had been pulled aboard and the Rio Madonna began to make its way out of the lagoon, the lone creature breached the surface and stared at the departing boat. Then the beast slowly sank beneath the surface as the small monkey-like creatures came out of the trees and started jabbering and jumping into the water. And so life returned to normal in the Garden of Eden, which returned to serenity in front of a collapsed legendary treasure that would continue to tease the mind of greedy men the world over — the lost mines of El Dorado.

25

Pete Golding paced outside Niles Compton's office. Alice watched him walk by her desk for the twentieth time. She shook her head, wondering when people would learn that you can wear the carpet down to fibers pacing and worrying, but that still couldn't change the speed at which things happened. She had learned this after her ten-thousandth mile of doing exactly what Pete was doing now.

Pete stopped as the door finally opened. Niles was finished with his phone call to Scottsdale, Arizona.

"Well?" Pete asked.

Niles had spoken directly to the surviving member of the 1942 expedition to Brazil. Charles Kauffman, an associate professor under Enrico Fermi at the time, was still very cognizant of what they had achieved back in the war years. His mind was sharp and he remembered everything.

"The Army Corps of Engineers, along with the U.S. Navy and Army, removed one hundred and two pounds of enriched uranium from El Dorado." Niles sat on the edge of Alice's desk as he spoke. "They had discovered information from a spy in 1941 that the ore samples were indeed real and were stored in the archives, the same samples and cross Farbeaux got his hands on in just the last few years. Anyway, Mr. Kauffman explained to me that Fermi and the effort at the University of Chicago had yet to achieve that which they had been theorizing since Einstein had said it was possible—"

"A sustained chain reaction," Pete said for him.

"That's right. They needed something that they did not have, a source of enriched uranium. Well, we now know the source fell directly into their laps, thrown there by the U.S. military and Corps of Engineers when they confirmed the existence of Padilla's lagoon and samples. It was never about the gold. It was always the uranium."

"Let me guess from my memory of the dates," Pete said. "By the time the expedition had met its ill-fated end, Fermi and his team had achieved their reaction in the States?"

"Yes."

"And the material?"

"It was placed in storage in Utah by the Army Corps of Engineers, and forgotten about until just recently."

"Is that it?" Pete asked.

It was Alice who guessed at it.

"The material has come up missing, hasn't it?"

"Yes, it has. And you will never guess who the beneficiary of this unusual find was."

"Well, who was it?" Pete asked when Niles didn't say anything more.

They owned the night. There wasn't a team in the world better at operations that called for sheer audacity than the Blue Light element of Delta, the highly secretive commando and antiterrorist unit of the U.S. Army.

They had been briefed on their mission by the secretary of defense, himself. The plan called for a twelve-man incursion into the most unlikely weapons storage facility they had ever been called upon to strike. The storage unit was placed three stories below ground level in an area the Iraqis knew no one would ever suspect.

The HALO parachute jump had gone off without incident and the twelve Blue Light commandos settled easily to the desert scrub just outside of the ancient ruins. The facility had been hastily constructed and was lightly guarded and the strike team took advantage of the close in intelligence supplied to them from Iraqi informants inside their military.

The target: the ancient ruins of the city of Babylon.

The material was stored in an underground bunker originally built by Saddam Hussein during his tyrannical rule of Iraq. Since no one but the topmost chiefs of the Iraqi military knew what the material was, the area was virtually unsecured. The bunker's few guards were easily dispatched with regret toward their innocence. Five soldiers in all silently, quickly killed without a warning being sounded.

Thirteen minutes later, the material had been found and tested, verifying the fact that it was indeed the same ore that had been removed from Brazil almost seventy years before.

An hour after the mission had started it was over and news relayed to the president of the United States that Iraq was no longer in possession of material that would enable that country to manufacture the world's largest "dirty bomb." The Iraqi government would have to defend themselves from Iran with the aid of a few well-chosen friendly nations instead.

The Brazilian chief of staff had just made a withdrawal from his protected accounts at the Banco de Juarez. Senor Mendez, his benefactor, was out of the country, or so he was told when he asked for him. He smiled to himself; it did not matter as he would never see him again, as his military career was over at any rate due to his final act of treachery to his country.

As he stepped from the suite of offices he looked at his watch; plenty of time to make his charter flight to Venezuela. As he strolled casually toward the elevator, his briefcase pleasantly heavy with more than six million American dollars in payoff money earned over the years from various cartels, to allow drug overflights of his country, he was appreciative of the attractive twenty-something woman who joined him as he waited for the elevator. As the express car arrived he smiled and gestured for her to enter first. As the door closed, the general removed his sunglasses and turned, smiling. His smile faded quickly as the silenced Glock nine-millimeter pistol went off in his face. The woman placed the smoking weapon in her handbag and waited for the elevator to arrive at the private lobby on the first floor. Before the door opened, she reached down and removed the briefcase from the dead hand of the general, then popped its latches and poured the money out, onto his prone body.

The president of Brazil did not care to be made a fool in front of the Americans.

The crowded pressroom was deathly still as the secretary of state slowly unfolded his prepared statement. He scanned those assembled and saw the president standing well away from any prying camera lenses. Secretary Nussbaum closed his eyes and then opened them, and tried in vain to smile.

"Good afternoon. For the many months of campaigning to succeed the president into this very office, I have been blessed with many letters of support from our party. Thus it is with a sad heart that I must now decline the upcoming nomination for the presidency due to health reasons I won't go into here—"

The president listened for a moment and then turned away. He had never been so tempted in his many years in public life to throttle a man he had considered a close friend and advisor. A man who found it easy to lie, cheat, and murder his way into the highest office of the country.

"Hi, Daddy," Kelly said as she joined him on his way back to the Oval Office.

He smiled and placed his arm around her. "Hi there, yourself."

"What's going to happen to that jerk and his buddies now?" she asked, thinking about Robby, Professor Zachary, and the others, and the horrible fate handed to them from these men her father had trusted.

"They are all being retired from public life."

"That's all? After what they did?" she asked incredulously.

He would have loved to explain the real inner workings of the world to his daughter, because she and the other survivors deserved at least that much. But what good would it do to tell them and his countrymen that, on his watch, trusted men were able to get their hands on the most deadly material in the world and use it for their own gains? None. Passing enriched uranium to a foreign nation and allowing them to use that material as a possible means of detonating a dirty bomb over the forces of an aggressive Iran was not legally treason. No U.S. law existed to forbid it. And so, the military men involved in the conspiracy were simply reassigned for their failure to foresee the Iranian threat of invasion. At least officially. They would be quietly retired, and their despicable lives would go on with only a look back at the positions they might have held in the secretary's new government.

As for the secretary, he would die quietly in his sleep from something resembling a massive coronary. That would be the only justice handed down for the man who had cost the lives of over seventy Americans. Kelly did not need to know the details.

"That's just the way of it, baby." He stopped and turned her toward him. "I'm sorry. So, are you heading back to California to visit your friend, Robby?"

"Yes."

"You tell him to get well, and we'll talk about certain aspects of his summer with you when he's better," he said. He kissed her on the cheek and sent her upstairs to her mother. Then he turned and entered the Oval Office.

The four Secret Service agents and three FBI were standing around a lone man sitting on the couch. The director of the FBI sat facing the man, who held his head down. The president walked past them and sat at his desk. He looked up and shook his head. The ex-national security advisor slowly looked up into the eyes of his former boss.

"Now, what am I supposed to do with you?" the president asked no one in particular as he glared at his own personal Judas.

The Secret Service agent by the door reached out and closed it.