Inca Gold dp-12

by Clive Cussler

  Satan's Sink was shaped nothing like the sacrificial pool in Peru, Pitt thought, as he gazed at the yellow nylon line trailing into the transparent depths. He sat on a rock at the edge of the water, his eyes shaded with a look of concern, hands lightly grasping the nylon line whose end was wound around the drum of a compact reel.

  Outside, 80 meters (262 feet) above the bottom of the tubular borehole, Admiral Sandecker sat in a lawn chair beside a ravaged and rusting 1951 Chevy half-ton pickup truck with a faded camper in the bed that looked as though it should have been recycled years ago. Another automobile was parked behind it, a very tired and worn 1968 Plymouth Belvedere station wagon. Both had Baja California Norte license plates.

  Sandecker held a can of Coors beer in one hand as he lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes with the other and scrutinized the surrounding landscape. He was dressed to complement the old truck, having the appearance of any one of thousands of retired American vagabonds who travel and camp around the Baja Peninsula on the cheap.

  He was surprised to find so many flowering plants in the Sonoran Desert, despite scant water and a climate that runs from subfreezing nights in the winter to a summer heat that produces furnace temperatures. Far off in the distance he watched a small herd of horses grazing on bunchgrass.

  Satisfied the only life within his immediate area was a red diamondback rattler sunning itself on a rock and a black tailed jackrabbit that hopped up to him, took one look, and leaped away, he rose from his lawn chair and ambled down the slope of the borehole to the pool.

  "Any sign of the law?" asked Pitt at the admiral's approach.

  Nothing around here but snakes and rabbits," grunted Sandecker. He nodded toward the water. "How long have they been down?"

  Pitt glanced at his watch. "Thirty-eight minutes."

  "I'd feel a whole lot better if they were using professional equipment instead of old dive gear borrowed from local Customs agents."

  "Every minute counts if we're to save Loren and Rudi. By doing an exploratory survey now to see if my plan has the slightest chance of succeeding, we save six hours. The same time it takes for our state-of-the-art equipment to arrive in Calexico from Washington."

  "Sheer madness to attempt such a dangerous operation," said Sandecker in a tired voice.

  "Do we have an alternative?"

  "None that comes to mind."

  "Then we must give it a try," said Pitt firmly.

  "You don't even know yet if you have the slightest prospect of--"

  "They've signaled," Pitt interrupted the admiral as the line tautened in his hands. "They're on their way up."

  Together, Pitt pulling in on the line, Sandecker holding the reel between his knees and turning the crank, they began hauling in the two divers who were somewhere deep inside the sinkhole on the other end of the 200-meter 460(656-foot) line. A long fifteen minutes later, breathing heavily, they brought in the red knot that signified the third fifty-meter mark.

  "Only fifty meters to go," Sandecker commented heavily. He pulled on the reel as he cranked, trying to ease the strain on Pitt who did the major share of the work. The admiral was a health enthusiast, jogged several miles a day, and occasionally worked out in the NUMA headquarters health spa, but the exertion of pulling dead weight without a time-out pushed his heart rate close to the red line. "I see them," he panted thankfully.

  Gratefully, Pitt let go of the line and sagged to a sitting position to catch his breath. "They can ascend on their own from there."

  Giordino was the first of the two divers to surface. He removed his twin air tanks and hoisted them to Sandecker. Then he offered a hand to Pitt who leaned back and heaved him out of the water. The next man up was Dr. Peter Duncan, a U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist, who had arrived in Calexico by chartered jet only an hour after Sandecker contacted him in San Diego. At first he thought the admiral was joking about an underground river, but curiosity overcame his skepticism and he dropped everything to join in the exploratory dive. He spit out the mouthpiece to his air regulator.

  "I never envisioned a water source that extensive," he said between deep breaths.

  "You found an access to the river," Pitt stated., not asked, happily.

  "The sinkhole drops about sixty meters before it meets a horizontal feeding stream that runs a hundred and twenty meters through a series of narrow fissures to the river," explained Giordino.

  Can we gain passage for the float equipment?" Pitt queried.

  "It gets a little tight in places, but I think we can squeeze it through."

  "The water temperature?"

  "A cool but bearable twenty degrees Celsius, about sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit."

  Duncan pulled off his hood, revealing the great bush of a red beard. He made no effort to climb from the pool. He rested his arms on the bank and babbled in excitement. "I didn't believe it when you described a wide river with a current of nine knots under the Sonoran Desert. Now that I've seen it with my own eyes, I still don't believe it. I'd guess anywhere from ten to fifteen million acre-feet of water a year is flowing down there."

  "Do you think it's the same underground stream that flows under Cerro el Capirote?" asked Sandecker.

  "No doubt about it," answered Duncan. "Now that I've seen the river exists with my own eyes, I'd be willing to gamble it's the same stream that Leigh Hunt claimed runs beneath the Castle Dome Mountains."

  "So Hunt's canyon of gold probably exists." Pitt smiled.

  "You know about that legend?"

  "No legend now."

  A delighted look crossed Duncan's face. "No, I guess not, I'm happy to say."

  "Good thing we were tied to a fixed guideline," said Giordino.

  Duncan nodded. "I couldn't agree more. Without it, we would have been swept away by the river when we emerged from the feeder stream."

  "And joined those two divers who ended up in the Gulf."

  I can't help but wonder where the source is," mused Sandecker.

  Giordino rubbed a hand through his curly mop. "The latest in geophysical ground-penetrating instruments should have no problem tracking the course."

  "There is no predicting what a discovery of this magnitude means to the drought-plagued Southwest," said Duncan, still aroused by what he'd seen. "The benefits could result in thousands of jobs, millions of acres brought under cultivation, pasture for livestock. We might even see the desert turned into a Garden of Eden."

  "The thieves will drown in the water that makes the desert into a garden," Pitt said, staring into the crystal blue pool and remembering Billy Yuma's words.

  "What was that you said?" asked Giordino curiously.

  Pitt shook his head and smiled. "An old Indian proverb."

  After carrying the dive equipment up to the surface entrance of the borehole, Giordino and Duncan stripped off their suits while Sandecker loaded their gear into the Plymouth station wagon. The admiral came over as Pitt drove alongside in the old pickup and stopped.

  "I'll meet you back here in two hours," he notified Sandecker.

  "Mind telling us where you're going?"

  "I have to see a man about raising an army."

  "Anybody I know?"

  "No, but if things go half as well as I hope, you'll be shaking his hand and pinning a medal on him by the time the sun goes down."

  Gaskill and Ragsdale were waiting at the small airport west of Calexico on the United States side of the border when the NUMA plane landed and taxied up to a large Customs Service van. They had begun transferring the underwater survival equipment to the van from the cargo hatch of the plane when Sandecker and Giordino arrived in the station wagon.

  The pilot came over and shook their hands. "We had to hustle to assemble your shopping list, but we managed to scrounge every piece of gear you requested."

  "Were our engineers able to lower the profile of the Hovercraft as Pitt requested?" asked Giordino.

  "A miraculous crash job." The pilot smiled. "But the admiral's mechanical whiz kids said to te
ll you they modified the Wallowing Windbag down to a maximum height of sixty-one centimeters."

  "I'll thank everyone personally when I return to Washington," said Sandecker warmly.

  "Would you like me to head back?" the pilot asked the admiral. "Or stand by here?"

  "Stick by your aircraft in case we need you."

  They had just finished loading the van and were closing the rear cargo doors when Curtis Starger came racing across the airstrip in a gray Customs vehicle. He braked to a stop and came from behind the wheel as if shot out of a cannon.

  "We got problems," he announced.

  "What kind of problems?" Gaskill demanded.

  "Mexican Border Police just closed down their side of the border to all U.S. traffic entering Mexico."

  "What about commercial traffic?"

  "That too. They also added insult to injury by putting up a flock of military helicopters with orders to force down all intruding aircraft and stop any vehicle that looks suspicious."

  Ragsdale looked at Sandecker. "They must be onto your fishing expedition."

  "I don't think so. No one saw us enter or leave the borehole."

  Starger laughed. "What do you want to bet that after Senor Matos ran back and reported our hard stand to the Zolars, they frothed at the mouth and coerced their buddies in the government to raise the drawbridge."

  "That would be my guess," agreed Ragsdale. "They were afraid we'd come charging in like the Light Brigade."

  Gaskill looked around. "Where's Pitt?"

  "He's safe on. the other side," replied Giordino.

  Sandecker struck the side of the aircraft with his fist. "To come this close," he muttered angrily. "A bust, a goddamned bust."

  There must be some way we can get these people and their gear back to Satan's Sink," said Ragsdale to his fellow federal agents.

  Starger and Gaskill matched crafty grins. "Oh, I think the Customs Service can save the day," said Starger.

  "You two got something up your sleeves?"

  "The Escobar affair," Starger revealed. "Familiar with it?"

  Ragsdale nodded. "The underground drug smuggling operation."

  Juan Escobar lived just across the border in Mexico," Starger explained to Sandecker and Giordino, "but operated a truck repair garage on this side. He smuggled in a number of large narcotics shipments before the Drug Enforcement Agency got wise to him. In a cooperative investigation our agents discovered a tunnel running a hundred and fifty meters from his house under the border fence to his repair shop. We were too late for an arrest. Escobar somehow got antsy, shut down his operation before we could nail him, and disappeared along with his family."

  "One of our agents," added Gaskill, "a Hispanic who was born and raised in East Los Angeles, lives in Escobar's former house and commutes through the border crossing, posing as the new owner of Escobar's truck repair shop."

  Starger smiled with pride. "The DEA and Customs have made over twenty arrests on information that came to him from other drug traffickers wanting to use the tunnel."

  "Are you saying it's still open?" asked Sandecker.

  "You'd be surprised how often it comes in handy for the good guys," answered Starger.

  Giordino looked like a man offered salvation. "Can we get our stuff through to the other side?"

  Starger nodded. "We simply drive the van into the repair shop. I'll get some men to help us carry your equipment under the border to Escobar's house, then load it into our undercover agent's parts truck out of sight in the garage. The vehicle is well known over there, so there is no reason why you'd be stopped."

  Sandecker looked at Giordino. "Well," he said solemnly, "are you ready to write your obituary?"

  The stone demon stoically ignored the activity around him as if biding his time. He did not feel, nor could he turn his head and see, the recent gouges and craters in his body and remaining wing, shot there by laughing Mexican soldiers who used him for target practice when their officers had disappeared into the mountain. Something within the carved stone sensed that its menacing eyes would still be surveying the ageless desert centuries after the intruding humans had died and passed beyond memory into the afterworld.

  A shadow passed over the demon for the fifth time that morning as a sleek craft dropped from the sky and settled onto the only open space large enough for it to land, a narrow slot between two army helicopters and the big winch with its equally large auxiliary power unit.

  In the rear passenger seat of the blue and green police helicopter, Police Comandante of Baja Norte Rafael Corona stared thoughtfully out the window at the turmoil on the mountaintop. His eyes wandered to the malevolent expression of the stone demon. It seemed to stare back at him.

  Aged sixty-five, he contemplated his coming retirement without joy. He did not look forward to a life of boredom in a small house overlooking the bay at Ensenada, existing on a pension that would permit few luxuries. His square, brown-skinned face reflected a solid career that went back forty-five years. Corona had never E been popular with his fellow officers. Hardworking, straight as an arrow, he had prided himself on never taking a bribe. Not one peso in all his years on the force. Though he never faulted others for accepting graft under the table from known criminals or shady businessmen seeking to sidestep investigations, neither did he condone it. He had gone his own way, never informing, never voicing complaints or personal moral judgments.

  Bitterly he recalled how he had been passed over for promotion more times than he could remember. But whenever his superiors slipped too far and were discovered in scandal, the civilian commissioners always turned to Corona, a man they resented for his honesty but needed because he could be trusted.

  There was a reason Cortina could never be bought in a land where corruption and kickbacks were commonplace. Every man, and woman too, has a price. Resentfully but patiently Cortina had waited until his price was met. If he was to sell out, he wouldn't come cheap. And the ten million dollars the Zolars offered for his cooperation, above and beyond the official approval for the treasure removal, was enough to ensure that his wife, four sons and their wives, and eight grandchildren would enjoy life in the new and rejuvenated Mexico spawned under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

  At the same time, he knew the old days of looking the other way while holding out an open palm were dying out. The last two presidents of Mexico had waged all-out war against bureaucratic corruption. And the legalization and price regulation of certain drugs had dealt the drug dealers a blow that had cut their profits by 80 percent and their death-dealing volume by two-thirds.

  Cortina stepped from the helicopter and was met by one of Amaru's men. He remembered arresting him for armed robbery in La Paz and helping obtain a conviction and a five-year prison term. If the freed criminal recognized Corona, there was no indication. He was ushered by the ex-convict into an aluminum house trailer that had been airlifted from Yuma to be used as an office for the treasure recovery project on top of the mountain.

  He was surprised to see modern oil paintings by some of the Southwest's finest artists adorning the walls. Inside the richly paneled trailer, seated around an antique French Second Empire table, were Joseph Zolar, his two brothers, Fernando Matos from the National Affairs Department, and Colonel Roberto Campos, commander of northern Mexico's military forces on the Baja Peninsula.

  Cortina gave a nod and a slight bow and was motioned to a chair. His eyes widened slightly as a very attractive serving lady brought him a glass of champagne and a plate of smoked sturgeon topped by a small mound of caviar. Zolar pointed to a cutaway illustration of the passageway leading to the interior caverns.

  "Not an easy job, let me tell you. Bringing all that gold across a river deep below the floor of the desert, and then transporting it up a narrow tunnel to the top of the mountain."

  "It goes well?" asked Cortina.

  "Too early to throw confetti," replied Zolar. "The hardest part, dragging out Huascar's chain, is under way. Once it reaches the surface--" he
paused to read the dial of his watch-- "in about half an hour from now, we will cut it into sections for easier loading and unloading during shipping. After it is safe inside our storage facilities in Morocco, it will be reconnected."

  "Why Morocco?" inquired Fernando Matos. "Why not your warehouse in Galveston or your estate in Douglas, Arizona?"

  "Protection. This is one collection of artifacts we don't want to risk storing in the United States. We have an arrangement with the military commander in Morocco who protects our shipments. The country also makes a convenient distribution center to ship the artifacts throughout Europe, South America, and the Far East."

  "How do you plan to bring out the rest of the antiquities?" asked Campos.

  "After they are floated across the underground river on rafts, they will be drawn up the passageway on a train of narrow platforms with ski runners."

  "Then the winch I requisitioned has proven useful?"

  "A godsend, Colonel," replied Oxley. "By six o'clock this evening your men should be loading the last of the golden artifacts onto the helicopters you so graciously provided.

  Cortina held his glass of champagne but didn't taste it. "Is there any way of measuring the weight of the treasure?"

  "Professor Henry Moore and his wife have given me an estimate of sixty tons."

  "Good God," murmured Colonel Campos, an imposing figure of a man with a great mass of gray hair. "I had no idea it was so vast."

  "Historical records failed to give a full inventory," said Oxley.

  "And the value?" asked Corona.

  "Our original estimate," Oxley lectured, "was two hundred and fifty million American dollars. But I think it's safe to say it's worth closer to three hundred million."

  Oxley's amount was a total fabrication. The market price of the gold alone had risen close to seven hundred million dollars after the Moores' inventory. Incredibly, the added value as antiquities easily pushed the price well over one billion dollars on the underground market.

  Zolar faced Corona and Campos, a broad smile on his face. "What this means, gentlemen, is that we can raise the ante considerably for the people of Baja California Norte."