Clive Cussler - Inca Gold

The small cave widened into a large cavern whose ceiling arched beyond the beam of the flashlight. The river made a sweeping turn where it had formed a reef of polished gravel. Pitt crawled painfully onto the dry area to rest. He turned off the light to prolong the life of the batteries.

Abruptly, he flicked the flash on again. Something had caught his eye in the shadows before the light blinked out. Something was there, not 5 meters (16 feet) away, a black form that revealed a straight line aberrant to natural geometrics.

Pitt's spirits soared as he recognized the battered remains of the Wallowing Windbag. Incredibly, the Hovercraft had come through the horrific fall over the cataract and had been cast up here after drifting nearly 40 kilometers. At last a gleam of hope. He stumbled across the gravel beach to the rubber hull and examined it under his light.

The engine and fan had been torn from their mountings and were missing. Two of the air chambers were punctured and deflated, but the remaining six still held firm. Some of the equipment was swept away, but four air tanks, the first-aid kit, Duncan's plastic ball of colored water dye tracer, one of Giordino's paddles, two extra flashlights, and the waterproof container with Admiral Sandecker's thermos of coffee and four bologna sandwiches had miraculously survived.

"It seems my state of affairs has considerably improved," Pitt said happily to nobody but the empty cavern.

He began with the first-aid kit. After liberally soaking the shoulder wound with disinfectant, he awkwardly applied a crude bandage on it inside his tattered wet suit. Knowing it was useless to bind fractured ribs, he gritted his teeth, set his wrist and taped it.

The coffee had retained most of its heat inside the thermos, and he downed half of it before attacking the sandwiches. No medium-rare porterhouse steak, doused and flamed in cognac, tasted better than this bologna, Pitt decided. Then and there he vowed never to complain or make jokes about bologna sandwiches ever again.

After a brief rest, a goodly measure of his strength returned and he felt refreshed enough to resecure the equipment and break open Duncan's plastic dye container. He scattered Fluorescein Yellow with Optical Brightener into the water. Under the beam of his flashlight he watched until the dye stained the river with a vivid yellow luminescence. He stood and watched until the current swept it out of sight.

"That should tell them I'm coming," he thought aloud.

He pushed the remains of the Hovercraft out of the shallows. Favoring his injuries, he awkwardly climbed aboard and paddled one-handed into the mainstream.

As the partially deflated Wallowing Windbag caught the current and drifted downriver, Pitt leaned back comfortably and began humming the tune to "Up a Lazy River in the Noonday Sun."

Informed of up-to-the-minute events from california by Admiral Sandecker and agents Gaskill and Ragsdale in El Paso, the secretary of state decided to sidestep diplomatic protocol and personally call the President of Mexico. He briefed him on the far-reaching theft and smuggling conspiracy engineered by the Zolars.

"An incredible story," said Mexico's President.

"But true," the secretary of state assured him.

"I can only regret the incident occurred, and I promise my government's full cooperation with the investigation."

"If you'll forgive me, Mr. President, I do have a wish list of requests."

"Let's hear them."

Within two hours the border between Mexico and California was reopened. The government officials who were suckered by the Zolars into jeopardizing their positions by false promises of incredible riches were rounded up.

Fernando Matos and Police Comandante Rafael Cortina were among the first to be arrested by Mexican Justice investigators.

At the same time, vessels of the Mexican navy attached to the Sea of Cortez were alerted and ordered to sea.

Lieutenant Carlos Hidalgo peered up at a squawking gull before turning his attention back to the straight line of the sea across the horizon. "Are we searching for anything special, or just searching?" he casually asked his ship's captain.

"Looking for bodies," Commander Miguel Maderas replied. He lowered his binoculars, revealing a round, friendly face under long, thick black hair. His teeth were large and very white and almost always set in a Burt Lancaster smile. He was short and heavy and solid as a rock.

Hidalgo was a sharp contrast to Maderas. Tall and lean with a narrow face, he looked like a well-tanned cadaver. "Victims of a boating accident?"

"No, divers who drowned in an underground river."

Hidalgo's eyes narrowed skeptically. "Not another gringo folktale about fishermen and divers being swept under the desert and disgorged into the Gulf?"

"Who is to say?" Maderas replied with a shrug. "All I know is that orders from our fleet headquarters in Ensenada directed our ship and crew to patrol the waters on the northern end of the Gulf between San Felipe and Puerto Penasco for any sign of bodies."

"A large area for only one ship to cover."

"We'll be joined by two Class P patrol boats out of Santa Rosalia, and all fishing boats in the area have been alerted to report any sighting of human remains."

"If the sharks get them," Hildago muttered pessimistically, "there won't be anything left to find."

Maderas leaned back against the railing of the bridge wing, lit a cigarette, and gazed toward the stern of his patrol vessel. It had been modified from a 67-meter (220 foot) U.S. Navy minesweeper and had no official name other than the big G-21 painted on the bow. But the crew unaffectionately called her El Porqueria ("piece of trash") because she once broke down at sea and was towed to port by a fishing boat-- a humiliation the crew never forgave her for.

But she was a sturdy ship, quick to answer the helm, and stable in heavy seas. The crews of more than one fishing boat and private yacht owed their lives to Maderas and El Porqueria.

As executive officer of the ship, Hidalgo had the duty of plotting a search grid. When he was finished poring over a large nautical chart of the northern Gulf, he gave the coordinates to the helmsman. Then the dreary part of the voyage began, plowing down one lane and then reversing course as if mowing a lawn.

The first line was run at eight o'clock in the morning. At two o'clock in the afternoon a lookout on the bow yelled out.

"Object in the water!"

"Whereaway?" shouted Hildago.

"A hundred and fifty meters off the port bow."

Maderas lifted his binoculars and peered over the blue green water. He easily spotted a body floating face down as it rose on the crest of a wave. "I have it." He stepped to the wheelhouse door and nodded at the helmsman. "Bring us alongside and have a crew stand by to retrieve." Then he turned to Hildago. "Stop engines when we close to fifty meters."

The foaming bow wave faded to a gentle ripple, the heavy throb of the twin diesels died to a muted rumble as the patrol vessel slipped alongside the body rolling in the waves. From his view on the bridge wing, Maderas could see the bloated and distorted features had been battered to pulp. Small wonder the sharks didn't find it appetizing, he thought.

He stared at Hidalgo and smiled. "We didn't need a week after all."

"We got lucky," Hidalgo mumbled.

With no hint of reverence for the dead, two crewmen jabbed a boat hook into the floating corpse and pulled it toward a stretcher, constructed from wire mesh, that was lowered into the water. The body was guided into the stretcher and raised onto the deck. The ghastly, mangled flesh barely resembled what had once been a human being. Maderas could hear more than one of his crew retching into the sea before the corpse was zipped into a body bag.