For a fleeting instant, Pitt thought the old cook looked vaguely familiar. On reflection, though, Pitt figured the man only resembled someone he couldn't quite place. "I'll bet you can recite some pretty interesting tales about the dunes around here," he said, making idle conversation.
"A lot of bones lie in them, remains of pioneers and miners who tried to cross four hundred kilometers of desert from Yuma to Borrego Springs in the middle of summer."
"Once they passed the Colorado River, there was no water?" asked Loren.
"Not a drop, not until Borrego. That was long before the valley was irrigated. Only after them old boys died from the sun did they learn their bodies lay not five meters from water. The trauma was so great they've all come back as ghosts to haunt the desert."
Loren looked perplexed. "I think I missed something."
"There's no water on the surface," the old fellow explained. "But underground there's whole rivers of it, some as wide and deep as the Colorado."
Pitt was curious. "I've never heard of large bodies of water running under the desert."
"There's two for sure. One, a really big sucker, runs from upper Nevada south into the Mojave Desert and then west, where it empties into the Pacific below Los Angeles. The other flows west under the Imperial Valley of California before curling south and spilling into the Sea of Cortez."
"What proof do you have these rivers actually exist?" asked Loren. "Has anyone seen them?"
"The underground stream that flows into the Pacific," answered the cook, as he prepared Loren's chiliburger, "was supposedly found by an engineer searching for oil. He alleged his geophysical instruments detected the river and tracked it across the Mojave and under the town of Laguna Beach into the ocean. So far nobody has proved or disproved his claim. The river traveling to the Sea of Cortez comes from an old story about a prospector who discovered a cave that led down into a deep cavern with a river running through it."
Pitt tensed as Yaeger's translation of the quipu suddenly flashed through his mind. "This prospector, how did he describe this underground river?"
The diner's owner talked without turning from his stove. "His name was Leigh Hunt, and he was probably a very inventive liar. But he swore up and down that back in 1942 he discovered a cave in the Castle Dome Mountains not too far northeast of here. From the mouth of the cave, through a chain of caverns, he descended two kilometers deep into the earth until he encountered an underground river rushing through a vast canyon. It was there Hunt claims he found rich deposits of placer gold."
"I think I saw the movie," said Loren skeptically.
The old cook turned and waved a spatula in the air. "People at the assay office stated that the sand Hunt carried back from the underground canyon assayed at three thousand dollars per ton. A mighty good recovery rate when you remember that gold was only twenty dollars and sixty-five cents an ounce back then."
"Did Hunt ever return to the canyon and the river?" asked Pitt.
"He tried, but a whole army of scavengers followed him back to the mountain, hungering for a piece of the River of Gold, as it became known. He got mad and dynamited a narrow part of the passage about a hundred meters inside the entrance. Brought down half the mountain. Neither Hunt nor those who followed him were ever able to dig through the rubble or find another cave leading inside."
"With today's mining technology," said Pitt, "reexcavating the passage should be a viable project."
"Sure, if you want to spend about two million dollars," snorted the cook. "Nobody I ever heard about was willing to gamble that much money on a story that might be pure hokum." He paused to set the chiliburger and coleslaw dishes on the counter. Then he drew a mug of beer from a tap, walked around the bar and sat down on a stool next to Pitt. "They say old Hunt somehow made it back inside the mountain but never came out. He disappeared right after he blew the cave and was not seen again. There was talk that he found another way inside and died there. A few people believe in a great river that flows through a canyon deep beneath the sands, but most think it's only another tall tale of the desert."
"Such things do exist," said Pitt. "A few years ago I was on an expedition that found an underground stream."
"Somewhere in the desert Southwest?" inquired the cook.
"No, the Sahara. It flowed under a hazardous waste plant and carried pollutants to the Niger River, and then into the Atlantic where it caused a proliferation of red tides."
"The Mojave River north of here goes underground after running above the surface for a considerable distance. Nobody knows for certain where it ends up."
Between bites of the chiliburger Loren asked, "You seem convinced that Hunt's river flows into the Sea of Cortez. How do you know it doesn't enter the Pacific off California?"
"Because of Hunt's backpack and canteen. He lost them in the cave and they were found six months later, having drifted up on a beach in the Gulf."
"Don't you think that's highly improbable? The pack and canteen could have belonged to anyone. Why would anyone believe they were his?" Loren questioned the cook as if she was sitting on a congressional investigation committee.
"I guess because his name was stenciled on them."
The unexpected obstacle did not deter Loren. She simply sidestepped it. "There could be a good twenty or more logical explanations for his effects being in the Gulf. They could have been lost or thrown there by someone who found or stole them from Hunt, or more likely he never died in the cave and dropped them from a boat himself."
"Could be he lost them in the sea," admitted the cook, "but then how do you explain the other bodies?"
Pitt looked at him. "What other bodies?"
"The fisherman who disappeared in Lake Cocopah," replied the cook in a hushed voice, as if he was afraid of being overheard. "And the two divers that vanished into Satan's Sink. What was left of their bodies was found floating in the Gulf."
"And the desert telegraph sends out another pair of tall tales," suggested Loren dryly.
The cook held up his right hand. "God's truth. You can check the stories out with the sheriff's department."
"Where are the sink and lake located?" asked Pitt.
"Lake Cocopah, the spot where the fisherman was lost, is southeast of Yuma. Satan's Sink lies in Mexico at the northern foot of the Sierra el Mayor Mountains. You can draw a line from Hunt's mountain through Lake Cocopah and then Satan's Sink right into the Sea of Cortez."
Loren continued the interrogation. "Who's to say they didn't drown while fishing and diving in the Gulf?"
"The fisherman and his wife were out on the lake for the better part of the day when she wanted to head back to their camper to start dinner. He rowed her ashore and then continued trolling around the lake. An hour later, when she looked for him, all she could see was his overturned boat. Three weeks later a water-skier spotted his body floating in the Gulf a hundred and fifty kilometers from the lake."
"I'm more inclined to believe his wife did him in, dumped his remains in the sea and threw off suspicion by claiming he was sucked into an underground waterway."
"What about the divers?" Pitt queried.
"Not much to tell. They dove into Satan's Sink, a flooded pool in an earthquake fault, and never came out. A month later, battered to a pulp, they were also pulled out of the Gulf."
Pitt stabbed a fork at his coleslaw, but he was no longer hungry. His mind was shifting gears. "Do you happen to know approximately where Hunt's gear and the bodies were found?"
"I haven't made a detailed study of the phenomena," answered the diner's owner, staring thoughtfully at the heavily scarred wooden floor. "But as I recollect most of them were found in the waters off Punta el Macharro."
"What part of the Gulf would that be?"
"On the western shore. Macharro Point, as we call it in English, is two or three kilometers above San Felipe."
Loren looked at Pitt. "Our destination."
Pitt made a wry smile. "Remind me to keep a sharp eye for dead bodies."
The cook finished off his beer. "You folks heading for San Felipe to do a little fishing?"
Pitt nodded. "I guess you might call it a fishing expedition."
"The scenery ain't much to look at once you drop below Mexicali. The desert seems desolate and barren to most folks, but it has countless paradoxes. There are more ghosts, skeletons, and myths per kilometer than any jungle or mountains on earth. Keep that in mind and you'll see them as sure as the Irish see leprechauns."
"We'll keep that in mind," Loren said, smiting, "when we cross over Leigh Hunt's underground River of Gold."
"Oh, you'll cross it all right," said the cook. "The sad fact is you won't know it."
After Pitt paid for the gas and the meal, he went outside and checked the Pierce Arrow's oil and water. The old cook accompanied Loren onto the dining car's observation platform. He was carrying a bowl of carrots and lettuce. "Have a good trip," he said cheerfully.
"Thank you." Loren nodded at the vegetables. "Feeding a rabbit?"
"No, my burro. Mr. Periwinkle is getting up there in age and can't graze too well on his own."
Loren held out her hand. "It's been fun listening to your stories, Mr. . ."
"Cussler, Clive Cussler. Mighty nice to have met you, ma'am."
When they were on the road again, the Pierce Arrow and its trailer smoothly rolling toward the border crossing, Pitt turned to Loren. "For a moment there, I thought the old geezer might have given me a clue to the treasure site."
"You mean Yaeger's far-out translation about a river running under an island?"
"It still doesn't seem geologically possible."
Loren turned the rearview mirror to reapply her lipstick. "If the river flowed deep enough it might conceivably pass under the Gulf."
"Maybe, but there's no way in hell to know for certain without drilling through several kilometers of hard rock.
"You'll be lucky just to find your way to the treasure cavern without a major excavation."
Pitt smiled as he stared at the road ahead. "He could really spin the yarns, couldn't he?"
"The old cook? He certainly had an active imagination."
"I'm sorry I didn't get his name."
Loren settled back in the seat and gazed out her window as the dunes gave way to a tapestry of mesquite and cactus. "He told me what it was."
"And?"
"It was an odd name." She paused, trying to remember. Then she shrugged in defeat. "Funny thing . . . I've already forgotten it."
Loren was driving when they reached San Felipe. Pitt had stretched out in the backseat and was snoring away, but she did not bother to wake him. She guided the dusty, bug-splattered Pierce Arrow around the town's traffic circle, making a wide turn so she didn't run one side of the trailer over the curb, and turned south toward the town's breakwater-enclosed harbor. She did not expect to see such a proliferation of hotels and restaurants. The once sleepy fishing village was riding the crest of a tourist boom. Resorts appeared to be under construction up and down the beaches.
Five kilometers (3 miles) south of town she turned left on a road leading toward the waters of the Gulf. Loren thought it strange that an artificial, man-made harbor had been constructed on such an exposed piece of shoreline. She thought a more practical site would have been under the shelter of Macharro Point several kilometers to the north. Oh well, she decided. What did gringos know about Baja politics?
Loren stopped the Pierce alongside an antiquated ferryboat that looked like a ghost from a scrap yard. The impression was heightened by the low tide that had left the ferry's hull tipped drunkenly on an angle with its keel sunk into the harbor bottom's silt.
"Rise and shine, big boy," she said, reaching over the seat and shaking Pitt.
He blinked and peered curiously through the side window at the old boat. "I must have entered a time warp or I've fallen into the Twilight Zone. Which is it?"
"Neither. You're at the harbor in San Felipe, and you're looking at your home for the next two weeks."
"Good lord," Pitt mumbled in amazement, "an honest-to-God steamboat with a walking beam engine and side paddlewheels."
"I must admit it does have an air of Mark Twain about it.
"What do you want to bet it ferried Grant's troops across the Mississippi to Vicksburg?"
Gunn and Giordino spotted them and waved. They walked across a gangplank to the dock as Pitt and Loren climbed from the car and stood gazing at the boat.
"Have a good trip?" asked Gunn.
"Except for Dirk's snoring, it was marvelous," said Loren.
Pitt looked at her indignantly. "I don't snore."
She rolled her eyes toward the heavens. "I have tendonitis in my elbow from poking you."
"What do you think of our work platform?" asked Giordino, gesturing grandly at the ferryboat. "Built in 1923. She was one of the last walking beam steamboats to be built."
Pitt lifted his sunglasses and studied the antique vessel.
When seen from a distance most ships tend to look smaller than they actually are. Only up close do they appear huge. This was true of the passenger/car ferries of the first half of the century. In her heyday the 70-meter (230-foot) vessel could carry five hundred passengers and sixty automobiles. The long black hull was topped with a two-story white superstructure whose upper deck mounted one large smokestack and two pilothouses, one on each end. Like most car ferries, she could be loaded and off-loaded from either bow or stern, depending on the direction the ferry was steaming at the time. Even when new, she would never have been called glamorous, but she had supplied an important and unforgettable service in the lives of millions of her former passengers.
The name painted across the center of the superstructure that housed the paddlewheels identified her as the Alhambra.
"Where did you steal that derelict?" asked Pitt. "From a maritime museum?"
"To know her is to love her," said Giordino without feeling.
"She was the only vessel I could find quickly that could land a helicopter," Gunn explained. "Besides, I kept Sandecker happy by obtaining her on the cheap."
Loren smiled. "At least this is one relic you can't get in your transportation collection."
Pitt pointed to the walking beam mounted above the high A-frame that tilted up and down, one end driven by a connecting rod from the steam cylinder, the other driving the crank that turned the paddlewheel. "I can't believe her boilers are still fired by coal."
"They were converted to oil fifty years ago," said Gunn. "The engines are still in remarkable shape. Her cruising speed is twenty miles an hour."
"Don't you mean knots or kilometers?" said Loren.
"Ferryboat speeds are measured in miles," answered Gunn knowledgeably.
"Doesn't look like she's going anywhere," said Pitt. "Not unless you dig her keel out of the muck."
"She'll be floating like a cork by midnight," Gunn assured him. "The tide runs four to five meters in this section of the Gulf."
Though he made a show of disapproval, Pitt already felt great affection toward the old ferry. It was love at first sight. Antique automobiles, aircraft, or boats, anything mechanical that came from the past, fascinated him. Born too late, he often complained, born eighty years too late.
"And the crew?"
"An engineer with one assistant and two deckhands." Gunn paused and gave a wide boyish smile. "I get to man the helm while you and Al cavort around the Gulf in your flying machine."
"Speaking of the helicopter, where have you hidden it?"
"Inside the auto deck," replied Gunn. "Makes it convenient to service it without worrying about the weather. We push it out onto the loading deck for flight operations."
Pitt looked at Giordino. "Have you planned a daily search pattern?"
The stocky Italian shook his head. "I worked out the fuel range and flight times, but left the search pattern for you."
"What sort of time frame are we looking at?"
"Should be able to cover the area in three days."<
br />
"Before I forget," said Gunn. "The admiral wants you to contact him first thing in the morning. There's an Iridium phone in the forward pilothouse."
"Why not call him now?" asked Pitt.
Gunn looked at his watch. "We're three hours behind the East Coast. About now he's sitting in the Kennedy Center watching a play."
"Excuse me," interrupted Loren. "May I ask a few questions?"
The men paused and stared at her. Pitt bowed. "You have the floor, Congresswoman."
"The first is where do you plan to park the Pierce Arrow? It doesn't look safe enough around here to leave a hundred-thousand-dollar classic car sitting unattended on a fishing dock."
Gunn looked surprised that she should ask. "Didn't Dirk tell you? The Pierce and the trailer come on board the ferry. There's acres of room inside."
"Is there a bath and shower?"
"As a matter of fact, there are four ladies' restrooms on the upper passenger deck and a shower in the crew's quarters."
"No standing in line for the potty. I like that."
Pitt laughed. "You don't even have to unpack."
"Make believe you're on a Carnival Lines cruise ship," said Giordino humorously.
"And your final question?" inquired Gunn.
"I'm starved," she announced regally. "When do we eat?"
In autumn, the Baja sun has a peculiar radiance, spilling down through a sky of strange brilliant blue-white. This day, there wasn't a cloud to be seen from horizon to horizon. One of the most arid lands in the world, the Baja Peninsula protects the Sea of Cortez from the heavy swells that roll in from the dim reaches of the Pacific Ocean. Tropical storms with high winds are not unknown during the summer months, but near the end of October the prevailing winds turn east to west and generally spare the Gulf from high, choppy swells.
With the Pierce Arrow and its travel trailer safely tied down on the cavernous auto deck, Gunn at the wheel in the pilothouse, and Loren stretched on a lounge chair in a bikini, the ferry moved out of the breakwater harbor and made a wide turn to the south. The old boat presented an impressive sight as black smoke rose from her stack and her paddlewheels pounded the water. The walking beam, shaped like a flattened diamond, rocked up and down, transmitting the power from the engine's huge piston to the shaft that cranked the paddlewheels. There was a rhythm to its motion, almost hypnotic if you stared at it long enough.
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