Clive Cussler - Trojan Odyssey

They saved their sandwiches from the kitchen of the Refugio Bartola for the coming night excursion and ordered a lunch of fresh fish from the river, downed by the local beer.

The owner, whose name was Aragon, waited on their table. "May I recommend the gaspar. It's not often caught, and when prepared with my special sauce, it is a great delicacy."

"Gaspar," repeated Giordino. "Never heard of that one."

"A living relic millions of years old with armored scales, a snout and fangs. I promise you'll never be able to enjoy it anyplace but here."

"I'm always game for an adventure in gourmet dining," said Pitt. "Bring on the gaspar."

"I'm only going along with great trepidation," Giordino muttered.

"Too bad about the fortress being off-limits," said Pitt conversationally. "I hear the museum was worth a visit."

Aragon stiffened slightly and looked furtively through a window at El Castillo. "Si, senor, it is a pity you must miss it. But the government closed it down as too dangerous for tourists."

"Looks pretty sturdy to me," said Giordino.

Aragon shrugged. "All I know is what the police from Managua told me."

"Do its guards stay in town?" asked Pitt.

Aragon shook his head. "They set up a barracks inside the fortress and are rarely seen except when they are relieved by helicopter from Managua."

"None leave the fort, even for food, drink or pleasure?"

"No, senor. They do not socialize with us. Nor do they allow anyone within ten meters of the fence."

Giordino poured his bottle of beer into a glass. "First time I ever heard of a government keeping tourists out of a museum because it might fall down."

"Do you gentlemen wish to stay at the hotel tonight?" asked Aragon.

"No, thank you," answered Pitt. "I'm told there are rapids upriver and we'd like to pass through while it's still light."

"You shouldn't have a problem if you stay inside the channel. Boats rarely overturn in the rapids if people are careful. It's the crocodiles in calm water that present a problem to anyone who falls over the side."

"Does your restaurant serve steak?" Pitt inquired.

"Si, senor. Do you wish more to eat?"

"No, we'd like to take the meat with us for later. Once we pass through the rapids, my friend and I will camp onshore and cook dinner over a fire."

Aragon nodded. "Be sure and camp inland from the banks of the river or you might become food for a hungry crocodile."

"Feeding a croc wasn't exactly what I had in mind," Pitt said, with a broad smile.

Departing late in the afternoon, they cruised through the rapids above El Castillo without mishap until they were out of sight of the town. Seeing no other pangas but their own between bends in the river, they drove the Greek Angel onto the bank, raised the outboard motor and pulled it into the lush underbrush until it was completely hidden from all water traffic.

While it was still light, they found a narrow path that headed toward the town. Then they ate their sandwiches and relaxed and slept till after midnight. Moving cautiously along the path while using their nightscope to penetrate the night, they skirted the little houses and made their way into a thicket of bushes, where they lay now and studied the security surrounding the fortress, spotting and marking the TV security cameras in their minds.

A light drizzle began to fall and soon their thin clothes were soaked through. Standing in a rain in the tropics was like standing in a shower at home. The water temperature was as comfortable to the skin as if it had been preset on a faucet.

When ready, Pitt, followed by Giordino, climbed into a high jatoba tree that towered more than a hundred feet high with a trunk diameter of four feet. The tree stood within several feet of the fence around the fortress, and its lower limbs stretched far over the fence top that was circled with a razor-sharp spiral of steel. Throwing a looped rope around a thick branch ten feet above, Giordino climbed up onto a higher limb before crawling through the smaller branches until he was beyond the fence and twelve feet above the ground. There he paused and swept the ground below with the nightscope.

Using the rope, Pitt hauled his body upward with his hands while his feet walked the tree trunk. Reaching the limb, he crept through the branches until he was even with Giordino's booted feet. "Any sign of the guards and their dogs?" he whispered.

"The guards are lazy," Giordino replied. "They loosed the dogs to run by themselves."

"A wonder they haven't scented us by now."

"You spoke too soon. I see three of them staring in our direction. Oh, oh, here they come on the run."

Before the dogs began barking, Pitt reached into the knapsack on his back, grabbed the steaks from the restaurant and heaved them onto a ramp leading to the nearest bastion. They landed with a distinct plop sound that the dogs heard and homed in on.

"Are you sure this will work?" Giordino murmured.

"It always does in the movies."

"Now there's cheery assurance," Giordino groaned.

Pitt dropped down off the tree limb to the ground and stayed on his feet. Giordino followed, casting a wary eye on the dogs, who chewed their raw meat in happy delirium without paying the least attention to the two intruders.

"I may never doubt you again," Giordino said under his breath.

"I won't forget you said that."

Pitt led the way toward one of the stone ramps, using the night-scope to see when the nearest TV camera swung to its widest arc. When he signaled with a whistle, Giordino ran under the camera's blind side and sprayed the lens with black paint. Moving on, they paused outside the closed and darkened museum, listening for suspicious sounds. Muted voices could be heard over the ramparts inside the main courtyard, where the guards' temporary barracks had been constructed. They entered what was once a storeroom. The stonewalls were still solid, but the wooden beams and roof were long gone.

Pitt motioned toward a central turret that rose above the rest of the fort. It was built like a pyramid with the upper half sliced off at the middle. "If there is a vertical ventilator shaft from below, it has to come out there," he said softly.

"The only logical place," Giordino agreed. Then he cocked an ear. "What's that racket?"

Pitt paused, listening, his senses alert, his ears piercing the night. Then he nodded in the darkness. "That whirring sound must be coming from the ventilator fans."

Keeping in the darkened shadows, they climbed a narrow ramp of stones that protruded from the walls of the turret and ended at a small access door. A rush of cool air through the narrow opening struck them with nearly the force of a wind tunnel. Bending low against the draft, Pitt entered and found himself standing at the base of a large wire-mesh cage. The whirring noise from the fan blades beating the air below the mesh opening magnified and tore at their eardrums.

"Noisy devil," yelled Giordino.

"That's because we're right on top of it. Be a lot worse if it didn't have silencers installed. As it is, the noise is pretty well muted outside the turret."

"I didn't bargain for a gale-force wind," said Giordino, as he examined the thickness of the wire-mesh cover.

"The fans are designed to produce a computer-calculated volume of air at an efficient pressure."

"There you go again with the lecture. Don't tell me you took a basic course in tunnel construction."

"Have you forgotten the summer between semesters at the Air Force Academy when I worked in a silver mine in Leadville, Colorado?" retorted Pitt.

"I remember," said Giordino, smiling. "I spent my summer as a lifeguard in Malibu." Giordino peered through the wire mesh. A glow of light rose from the opening. He walked around the mesh until he found a bolt holding it to a latch. "Locked from the inside," he observed. "We'll need to cut through the mesh."