Clive Cussler - The Eye of Heaven

“Think you can get one of the bars in that?” he asked, pointing to a gap in the joint — a crack running around the stone where time had degraded the mortar.

Remi slipped her bar into it. “Sam? Try to get yours in, too.”

Sam joined her, but the fissure was too tight. He began scraping the mortar with the sharp edge of his tool, and in a half hour the stone was loose enough to shift. Lazlo joined them, and Antonio got his crowbar into the crack as well, and between the four of them they worked the stone from its setting, leaving a two-foot gap, the darkness below inky and damp. Remi directed her flashlight beam into the cavity, which swallowed the light like viscous mud. She squinted, trying to make anything out.

“Get the rope. I’ll drop down inside and look around.”

Sam shook his head. “No. I’ll go.”

“You think you can fit through that? It’ll be tight.”

“I work out.”

“Lately, by lifting tequila and enchiladas. But if you think you can make it …” Remi teased as Antonio uncoiled the nylon cord.

Antonio handed Sam one end. “There might be snakes. Many in this region are quite poisonous, as are the scorpions and spiders. We might want to wait until morning. I can get a fiber-optic scope from my associate in the tunnel dig, and perhaps one of his robots to explore the chamber.”

Sam grinned. “And lose out on all the glory? No chance. I live for this kind of thing.”

“But the snakes …” Maribela cautioned.

“I eat ’em for breakfast.”

“Hopefully, none of them have the same idea about you, old boy,” Lazlo said.

Remi rolled her eyes as Sam wound the rope twice around his waist. “Tie this to something up top that will support my weight — one of the vehicle bumpers would work. I’ll lower myself until I’m inside. Then I’ll let out rope. Slowly. If I’m screaming in pain, that would be a good signal to pull me up and get some antivenom ready.”

“We don’t have any antivenom,” Antonio said.

“No plan’s perfect. But the ‘If I’m screaming … pull me up’ part’s still a good one.”

Remi took his hand. “Be careful, Tarzan.”

“I’d do the jungle call, but it might scare the snakes.”

“And horrify the bystanders. As well as your wife,” Lazlo said.

Antonio carried the rope up to ground level and returned a few minutes later. “You’re secure.”

“‘All right,’ as Evel Knievel used to say, ‘here goes nothing.’”

“Five bucks says he never said that,” Remi countered.

“Under his breath.”

Sam sat at the edge of the hole and dropped his legs in; then, with a final tug of the rope, he leaned his weight against the side and slid his lower body into the abyss. He fed out line slowly, disappearing beneath their feet. Remi moved to the edge and shined her flashlight beam down at him.

“Any snakes?” she asked, watching her beam and his play across the stone floor.

“Nope. No lawyers, either.”

“Sounds safer than out here.”

His feet touched down. He slowly swept the interior of the chamber and then played out more line as he moved cautiously to a stone entryway.

Above him stood Antonio, his leg twitching with nervous energy, and Sam could just make out the heads of the two security guards peering down the hole. The sky was now almost black, with the occasional twinkle of stars glimmering overhead.

Maribela paced from one end of the trench to the other, chewing at a fingernail, while Remi swept her beam into the far reaches of their discovery from above.

A minute later, the rope tightened again, and Sam called from below. “Pull me up.”

Antonio called out to one of the guards, who hurried off to start the truck and back it up, raising Sam in the process. The rope went taut, and then Sam appeared, his hair dusty and a spiderweb stuck to his face. Antonio yelled and the truck stopped. Sam hoisted himself the rest of the way and untied the rope from around his waist.

“Well?” Remi asked expectantly.

“Not good news. Looks like grave robbers got here a long time ago. As in centuries. Many centuries. You can see where the entry rocks were knocked in. That would have been before the surrounding terrain had covered it, so we’re talking pre-Columbian. Maybe even a thousand years ago. Even the skeletons are gone.” He shook his head. “Whatever this is, if it was the hidden tomb, it wasn’t that well hidden. There’s no treasure. Nothing. Just a couple of small empty rooms and a few carvings — nothing more.”

Remi’s shoulders sagged, as did Lazlo’s. “Not even any snakes?” she asked.

“Nary a one.”

She brushed his shirt as he swept the spiderweb aside. “So a big letdown, huh?”

“Only if you were expecting something besides a hole in the ground.”

“Much ado about nothing, then …” Lazlo said. “Ah, well, it happens, I suppose.”

Sam peered into the opening. “Although we still might learn something. But if you’re asking whether it was worth missing dinner over, the answer’s no.”

Remi smiled at him. “My big, brave explorer. I bet you worked up quite an appetite down there, didn’t you?”

“And thirst. Don’t forget drinks.”

Lazlo snorted and then covered it with a well-timed cough.

She turned to Antonio. “Are there any good places to eat in town? We can post a security guard here and explore the chamber in the morning.”

“Yes, there are several very good traditional Mexican restaurants.” He gave them the names of two of the most popular as they filed up the ladder, disappointment evident in everyone’s demeanor.

“How about we get you cleaned up and fed and then we can commiserate over a few margaritas about what went so horribly wrong?” Remi suggested to Sam. She turned to where Antonio was helping Maribela from the ladder. “Antonio, Maribela, you’re welcome to join us. You too, Lazlo.”

Antonio exchanged glances with his sister. “No thank you, we still have to drive back to Mexico City. But we’ll see you back here tomorrow morning. Say, nine o’clock?”

Sam shrugged. “Sure. There’s no hurry now. We found what there is to be found.”

“I’ve learned to never turn down the offer of a meal, if you don’t mind my sober company,” Lazlo said.

“There’s nothing we’d like better,” Sam replied.

A dark brown sedan rolled slowly down the deserted street in the Cerro de Xaltepec barrio of Mexico City, near the base of Sierra de Santa Catarina mountain, one of the worst neighborhoods in Mexico. Violence, drug trafficking, and human slavery were an everyday occurrence, as were murders that the police rarely spent time investigating. The philosophy was that if you were in that area, you were either looking for trouble or were a predator and probably deserved what you got. Pools of stinking water ringed the intersection where the sedan eased up by a gray cinder-block home with a corrugated-metal roof, the entire structure covered with graffiti, no lights on inside nor on the street.

The back door of the slow-moving sedan flew open and a form tumbled onto the filthy pavement. The door closed with a thunk and the driver sped up, traveling two blocks before he turned right onto a larger road and illuminated his headlights.

Carlos’s lifeless eyes stared uncomprehendingly into the eternity of the night sky. It would be many hours before a coroner’s van appeared to scoop up his remains, escorted by several trucks with heavily armed police to ensure that nobody shot the technicians as they went about their work. It would take two more days to make an identification, a typical occurrence in one of the most populous cities in the world — par for the course for a police force that was woefully underbudgeted and understaffed and had to make do with antiquated equipment already old at the turn of the new century.