Clive Cussler: Inca Gold

Pitt spotted Admiral Sandecker standing behind Giordino in his wheelchair. His wandering eyes also picked out Gordo Padilla with his arm around his wife, Rosa. Jesus, Gato, and the engineer, whose name he could never remember, stood nearby brandishing bottles in the air. Then the gangplank was down, and Pitt shook hands with Maderas and Hidalgo.

"Thank you, gentlemen, and thank your corpsman for me. He did a first-rate job of patching me up."

"It is we who are in your debt, Senor Pitt," said Hidalgo. "My mother and father own a small ranch not far from here and will reap the benefits when wells are sunk into your river."

"Please make me one promise," said Pitt.

"If it's within our power," replied Maderas.

Pitt grinned. "Don't ever let anyone name that damned river after me."

He turned and walked across to the auto deck of the ferry and into a sea of bodies. Loren rushed up to him, stopped, and slowly put her arms around his neck so she would not press her body against his injuries. Her lips were trembling as she kissed him.

She pulled back as the tears flowed, smiled and said, "Welcome home, sailor."

Then the rush was on. Newsmen and TV cameramen from both sides of the border swarmed around as Pitt greeted Sandecker and Giordino.

"I thought sure you'd bought a tombstone this time," said Giordino, beaming like a neon sign on the Las Vegas strip.

Pitt smiled. "If I hadn't found the Wallowing Windbag, I wouldn't be here."

"I hope you realize," said Sandecker, faking a frown, "that you're getting too old for swimming around in caves."

Pitt held up his good hand as if taking an oath. "So help me, Admiral, if I ever so much as look at another underground cavern, shoot me in the foot."

Then Shannon came up and planted a long kiss on his lips that had Loren fuming. When she released him, she said, "I missed you."

Before he could reply, Miles Rodgers and Peter Duncan were pumping his uninjured hand. "You're one tough character," said Rodgers.

"I busted the computer and lost your data," Pitt said to Duncan. "I'm genuinely sorry."

"No problem," Duncan replied with a broad smile. "Now that you've proven the river runs from Satan's Sinkhole under Cerro el Capirote and shown where it resurges into the Gulf, we can trace its path with floating sonic geophysical imaging systems along with transmitting instrument packages."

At that moment, unnoticed by most of the mob, a dilapidated Mexicali taxi smoked to a stop. A man jumped out and hurried across the dock and onto the auto deck wearing only a blanket. He put his head down and barreled his way through the mass of people until he reached Pitt.

"Rudi!" Pitt roared as he wrapped his free arm around the little man's shoulder. "Where did you fall from?"

As if he'd timed it, Gunn's splinted fingers lost their grip on the blanket and it fell to the deck, leaving him standing in only the hospital smock. "I escaped the clutches of the nurse from hell to come here and greet you," he said, without any sign of embarrassment.

"Are you mending okay?"

"I'll be back at my desk at NUMA before you."

Pitt turned and hailed Rodgers. "Miles, you got your camera?"

"No good photographer is ever without his cameras," Rodgers shouted over the noise of the crowd.

"Take a picture of the three battered bastards of Cerro el Capirote."

"And one battered bitch," added Loren, squeezing into the lineup.

Rodgers got off three shots before the reporters took over.

"Mr. Pitt!" One of the TV interviewers pushed a microphone in front of his face. "What can you tell us about the subterranean river?"

"Only that it exists," he answered smoothly, "and that it's very wet."

"How large would you say it is?"

He had to think a moment as he slipped his arm around Loren and squeezed her hip. "I'd guess about two-thirds the size of the Rio Grande."

"That big?"

"Easily."

"How do you feel after swimming through underground caverns for over a hundred kilometers?"

Pitt was always irritated when a reporter asked how a mother or father felt after their house burned down with all their children inside, or how a witness felt who watched someone fall from an airplane without a parachute.

"Feel?" stated Pitt. "Right now I feel that my bladder will burst if I don't get to a bathroom."

HOMECOMING

November 4, 1998

San Felipe, Baja California

Two days later, after everyone gave detailed statements to the Mexican investigators, they were free to leave the country. They assembled on the dock to bid their farewells.

Dr. Peter Duncan was the first to leave. The hydrologist slipped away early in the morning and was gone before anyone missed him. He had a busy year ahead of him as director of the Sonoran Water Project, as it was to be called. The water from the river was to prove a godsend to the drought-plagued Southwest. Water, the lifeblood of civilization, would create jobs for the people of the desert. Construction of aqueducts and pipelines would channel the water into towns and cities and would turn a dry lake into a recreational reservoir the size of Lake Powell.

Soon to follow would be projects to mine the mineral riches Pitt had discovered on his underground odyssey and to build a tourist center beneath the earth.

Dr. Shannon Kelsey was invited back to Peru to continue her excavations of the ruins in the Chachapoyan cities. Where she went, Miles Rodgers followed.

"I hope we meet again," said Rodgers, shaking Pitt's hand.

"Only if you promise to stay out of sacred sinkholes," Pitt said warmly.

Rodgers laughed. "Count on it."

Pitt looked down into Shannon's eyes. The determination and boldness burned as bright as ever. "I wish you all the best."

She saw in him the only man she had ever met whom she couldn't have or control. She felt an undercurrent of affection toward him she couldn't explain. Just to spite Loren again, Shannon kissed Pitt long and hard.

"So long, big guy. Don't forget me."

Pitt nodded and said simply, "I couldn't if I tried."

Shortly after Shannon and Miles left in their rented car for the airport in San Diego, a NUMA helicopter dropped out of the sun and touched down on the deck of the Alhambra. The pilot left the engine idling as he jumped down from the cargo hatch. He looked around a moment and then, recognizing Sandecker, approached him.

"Good morning, Admiral. Ready to leave, or should 1 shut down the engine?"

"Keep it running," answered Sandecker. "What's the status of my NUMA passenger jet?"

"Waiting on the ground at the Yuma Marine Corps Air Station to fly you and the others back to Washington."

"Okay, we're set to board." Sandecker turned to Pitt. "So, you're going on sick leave?"

"Loren and I thought we'd join a Classic Car Club of America tour through Arizona."

"I'll expect you in one week." He turned to Loren and gave her a brief kiss on the cheek. "You're a member of Congress. Don't take any crap from him and see that he gets back in one piece, fit for work."

Loren smiled. "Don't worry, Admiral. My constituents want me back on the job infighting shape too."

"What about me?" said Giordino. "Don't I get time off to recuperate?"

"You can sit behind a desk just as easily in a wheelchair." Then Sandecker smiled fiendishly. "Now, Rudi, he's a different case. I think I'll send him to Bermuda for a month."

"Whatta guy," said Gunn, trying desperately to keep a straight face.

It was a charade. Pitt and Giordino were like sons to Sandecker. Nothing went on between them that wasn't marked with a high degree of respect. The admiral knew with dead certainty that as soon as they were sound and able, they'd be in his office pressuring him for an ocean project to direct.