Clive Cussler - Lost Empire

Sam started across the floor. Heart thudding in his chest, he tried to keep his pace steady, watching the placement of his feet as he stepped over holes or along their edges. As he crossed the cavern’s center point, there came a crackling sound, like pond ice giving way. Rivera cursed.Sam turned around.

“Don’t shine that in my eyes, damn it!”

Rivera had stepped into one of the smaller holes and fallen through up to his crotch. He struggled to extricate himself, straining to get his free leg under his body. He tried twice more, then stopped.“You’re going to come over here and help me up. If you-”

“I know,” Sam replied. “You’ll shoot me.”

Flashlight in his left hand, Sam strode forward. He flicked the beam into Rivera’s eyes, then down again. At the same time he stuffed his right hand into his pocket, grabbed a fistful of salt, and pulled it out again.“Damn it!” Rivera growled. “Keep the light-”

“Sorry.”

“That’s close enough. Just give me your wrist. Don’t grab ahold of me.”

Sam extended his wrist. Rivera grabbed it and used Sam’s counterweight to pull himself free. Sam felt Rivera’s weight shift forward. He twirled the flashlight in his fingers, shining the beam directly into Rivera’s eyes.“Sorry,” Sam said again.

Even as he said the words he was moving, sidestepping left, using Rivera’s momentary blindness to get the gun barrel off him. Sam swung his right hand forward as though throwing a baseball. The salt hit Rivera squarely in the eyes. Knowing what was coming, Sam dropped to his belly.

Rivera screamed and started pulling the trigger. Bullets thudded into the walls and ceiling. Salt crystals rained down, sparkling in the glow of Sam’s flashlight. Rivera spun wildly, trying to regain his balance as he staggered across the floor, the gun bucking in his hand.

Sam pushed himself to his knees, coiled his legs like a runner in the starting blocks, then pushed off and charged. Rivera heard the crunch of Sam’s footfalls and spun toward the sound, firing. Still running, Sam dropped back to his belly and skidded across the floor, the salt crystals ripping at his chest and chin. He went still. Held his breath.

Rivera whirled again, trying to pinpoint the sound. He lost his balance again, lurched sideways, and stepped squarely into another hole. With a zipperlike crackling sound, Rivera’s legs plunged through. He spread his arms to arrest his fall. The gun dropped from his hand and skittered across the salted floor, coming to a stop beside Sam’s face.He grabbed the gun and climbed to his feet.

“Fargo!” Rivera screamed.

Sam walked over to the hole. Rivera arms were fully extended. Only the palms of his hands were touching solid ground. Already his arms were trembling; the tendons in his neck strained beneath the skin. Still blinded by the salt, Rivera rotated his head wildly from side to side.Sam crouched down beside him.

“Fargo!”

“I’m right here. You’re in a bit of a pickle.”

“Get me out of this thing!”

“No.”

Sam shined his flashlight into the hole. Salt-encrusted rock outcroppings jutted from the walls like barbs, leaving only a two-foot-wide gap in the center. Far below, Sam could hear the roar of waves crashing against rock. He grabbed a nearby softball-sized stone, dropped it into the opening, and listened to it ricochet off the rocks until the sound faded.

“What was that?” Rivera asked.“That’s karma calling,” Sam replied. “About a hundred feet of it, based on Newton’s Second Law.”

“What the hell does that mean? Get me out!”

“You shouldn’t have shot my wife.”

Rivera growled in frustration. He tried to press himself upward but managed only a few inches. He slumped back down. His head dipped below the level of the floor. Beneath Rivera’s shirt, his muscles quivered with the strain.

“I just realized something,” Sam said. “The more your palms sweat, the more the salt dissolves beneath them. I think that’s what financial experts call diminishing returns. It’s not a perfect metaphor, but I think you get my point.”“I should have killed you.”

“Hang on to that thought. Soon it’s all you’re going to have left.”

Rivera’s left hand slipped off the edge. For a split second he clawed at the ground with his right hand, his nails shredding, before he tipped sideways and started to fall. He landed back first on one of the outcroppings, shattering his spine. He screamed in pain, then slid off and kept tumbling, his head slamming on rock after rock before disappearing from view.

TWO WEEKS LATER,

GOLDFISH POINT, LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA

REMI LIMPED INTO THE SOLARIUM AND EASED HERSELF DOWN ON the chaise lounge next to Sam’s. Without looking up from his iPad, Sam said, “You’re supposed to be using your cane for at least another week.”“I don’t like my cane.”

Sam looked over at her. “And you call me stubborn. How’s the leg feel?”

“Better. The doctor says I’ll be fit for full duty in a few weeks. Given the nasty alternative, I couldn’t be happier.”

“By ‘nastier,’ I assume you mean starving to death inside the crater of a dead volcano?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

Though Remi hadn’t been in danger of bleeding to death on what they’d since dubbed Chicomoztoc Island, the risk of infection and sepsis were all too real, Sam had known. He had only two choices: Stay put and wait for Selma to send help, which she was sure to do, but how quickly would her request for assistance take to make its way through the right channels in the Indonesian government? His second choice was to leave Remi alone and strike out on his own in search of help. In the end, Remi, knowing her husband as she did, encouraged him to leave her the gun and go. That left Sam the question of which direction.

The next morning he said good-bye to Remi and climbed to the lip of the caldera, where he stood for a time scanning the horizon. He’d all but decided to head south when he saw a faint trickle of smoke rising from the forest a few miles to the north.

At a jog, he zigzagged his way down the slope, waded into the water, and swam the half mile to the shore, where he headed north until he reached a river. This he followed inland, his eyes never leaving the smoke column until he reached a small clearing, in the center of which stood a man in a safari vest and a blue baseball cap bearing the BBC logo.Upon seeing the disheveled Sam stumbling into view, the director of the documentary yelled, “Cut!,” and began demanding to know who’d just ruined his shot.

Two hours later Sam was back in the caldera with Remi, and an hour after that the BBC helicopter touched down on the beach. The next day they were back in Jakarta, Remi tucked safely in bed.“WE HAVE TO START making some decisions,” Sam now said.

“I know.”

They were keeping some gargantuan secrets. Given the momentous nature of what they’d discovered in the weeks following their improvised excavation of the Shenandoah ’s bell, it had come as a shock to realize that other than themselves, Selma, Pete, Wendy, Professors Milhaupt and Dydell, and the Kid, no one was aware of what they’d found. The outrigger in Madagascar was still perched atop its altar in the Lion’s Head cave; the Shenandoah was still sitting in the ravine on Pulau Legundi, buried under fifteen feet of Krakatoan ash; the maleo statuette they’d recovered from the Shenandoah was tucked away in their workroom safe; and the ceremonial cavern beneath the caldera remained hidden and unspoiled.

While they fully intended to hand over these discoveries to the world’s archaeological and anthropological communities, they also recognized the wisdom of taking a few weeks to consider the implications of what they’d discovered and prepare themselves for the media storm that was sure to follow the press releases.