Clive Cussler - The Navigator

Baltazar head-butted Austin, got to his feet, and kicked Austin in the ribs. He aimed another kick at Austin’s face. Austin ignored the searing pain, grabbed Baltazar’s boot, and twisted. Baltazar stood on one foot, trying vainly to maintain his balance, and then fell head-first into the pool.

Austin scrambled to his feet and saw Baltazar trying to swim in the thick liquid. His head and face gleamed with the black oil.

“Get back, Kurt!”

The bandages that held Carina had stretched during her travels. She had freed herself and climbed off the statue’s arms. Now she stood on the stairs, holding the torch in her hand. With her white dress, and lovely features contorted in anger, she looked like an avenging angel.

“Wait,” Austin said. He started up the stairs.

Carina hesitated. She started to lower the torch. Then she saw that Baltazar was trying to climb out of the pool, a task made difficult by the oil on his hands. He struggled at the edge like a reptilian monster emerging from the deep. Carina raised her arm back and threw the torch. It arced through the air ahead of a trail of embers and landed in the middle of the oil pit.

There was a loud whoof.

Austin raced up the stairs and grabbed Carina around the waist. He pushed her into the space behind the statue and threw his body on top of hers.

Although the statue shielded them from the searing heat, they were in danger of choking from the cloud of greasy black smoke that billowed up to the ceiling. Even with smoke escaping through the vent in the ceiling, the chamber was filled with toxic fumes within seconds.

Austin was wrapping his arm tighter around Carina’s slim body when he felt a handle on the wall. He pulled the handle and a section of wall slid back. Cold air flowed from the rectangular opening. Austin was barely able to get the words out but he shouted at Carina to crawl through the opening. Then he followed her and slid the wall section shut.

Austin dug a penlight out of his jacket and flashed it around. They were in a room barely bigger than a closet. The air was musty but free of smoke. He guessed that it had been built to protect Baltazar’s ancestors when they were making sacrifices to Ba’al.

They stayed behind the statue until the oil burned itself out. Austin slid the door open a crack. The air was foul but mostly free of smoke. They used some of Carina’s gauze bandages to fashion makeshift smoke masks. Then they crawled out from behind the statue and made their way down the stairs to the door.

As they passed the smoking fire pit, Carina averted her eyes. Austin glanced into the pool as if he expected Baltazar to crawl from the depths. But all he saw was the noxious blackness of the abyss.

Chapter 54

AFTER HIS QUICK PHONE CALL to Baltazar, Adriano had driven to New Jersey to work on his plans for NUMA.

He stayed in a cheap motel, where he devised an intricate plan for NUMA that involved multiple assassins, car bombs, biological agents, and old standbys, such as high-powered rifles. He methodically plowed through staff listings and gave priority to targets that would gut the agency. He moved on the next day and stayed in another motel. By the third day, he had put the finishing touches on his scheme for mass death and destruction. Then he waited for word from Baltazar.

After two days, Adriano tried to call Baltazar but got no answer. He hung up on the busy signal and punched in another number that connected him with the recording device he had planted in Austin’s tree.

“Hello, Joe,” Austin’s voice said. “How’s your research going?’

“We’ve got the mine pinned down,” Zavala said. “The papyrus told us exactly where to find it.”

Adriano raised an eyebrow and listened intently.

“Terrific! Feed me the details.”

Zavala told him about the hotel submerged under the lake in St. Anthony’s Wilderness, and went into great detail about the shaft leading from the kitchen into the mine. He gave Austin the GPS coordinates.

“How soon can we make an exploratory dive?” Austin said.

“I’m pulling together a dive team now. We can be on site in forty-eight hours.”

“Good work. We’ll go over the details tomorrow.”

The two men hung up after some unrelated chitchat.

The call had been made earlier that day. Adriano read the notes he’d written down. He checked out of his motel room and drove to a storage unit, one of several he maintained near Washington. The unit contained weapons and ammunition, money, changes of clothing and identity, and, for his immediate purposes, a complete set of scuba gear, which he loaded into the trunk of his car.

The next morning his car was bumping along the dirt road into St. Anthony’s Wilderness. He parked at the edge of the lake, got into a wet suit, and slipped into his buoyancy compensator and tank. Adriano was an accomplished diver, having learned his skills from the SEALs who’d been on Baltazar’s payroll.

He swam to a buoy floating in the lake, glanced at the reading on his portable GPS, and dove down to the hotel with powerful flutter kicks. He made his way to the kitchen and found the shaft. He dove into the opening without hesitating. Even if he hadn’t been anxious to get to the mine, it was doubtful he would have noticed the block-shaped plastic objects buried in the rubble within a few feet of the shaft opening.

When Adriano got to the bottom of the shaft, he was surprised to see a waterproof slate with an arrow drawn on it and the words: THIS WAY.

He followed the direction the arrow was pointing and came to another slate indicating a tunnel off the main cave. He followed it to an intersection. Another slate, another arrow. He came to the end of the tunnel. A fourth arrow pointed the way into the large mine chamber with the dais.

AS ADRIANO followed the arrow on the slate, two figures slipped quietly from the woods and made their way to the water’s edge. Austin checked his watch. “It’s been thirty minutes,” he said.

“That would put him down the shaft and into the mine,” Zavala said.

The phony telephone conversation had been set up as bait. Time to spring the trap. Austin waded into the water up to his waist. He was holding a transmitter protected in a waterproof case. He waited a few minutes, then lowered the transmitter into the water and pressed a button. Seconds later, multiple mounds of foam disturbed the surface of the lake.

Austin watched, tight-lipped, until the expanding ripples washed against his chest.

Then he turned and sloshed his way back to shore.

He was met by a grim-faced Zavala, who gave him a folder he’d found in Adriano’s car. The folder was marked NUMA.

FAR BELOW THE SURFACE of the lake, Adriano heard the explosions as a series of thuds.

He considered turning back but decided to keep on. Adriano had a robotlike sense of purpose, which made him an effective assassin, and he was determined to find the mine and its gold.

Following the arrow, he swam into the altar room. His pulse quickened at the sight of the raised dais, where the Thomas Jefferson box had rested.

Nestled in the shreds of wood was a diver’s slate with the words:

WHEN YOU GET TO HELL, ADRIANO, GIVE MR. BALTAZAR OUR REGARDS.

Austin again.

Adriano stared at the message, then threw the slate aside and swam with all his strength along the route that would take him back to the shaft. When he got there, he discovered a pile of rubble that was the only evidence of the collapsed shaft.

He glanced at his air gauge. He had minutes left. Even if there was a way out, he didn’t have enough air to search for it. Adriano sat on the pile of rubble until his air ran out completely. The last in the line of Spain’s official garrotters died, in a twist of irony, of asphyxiation.