Mendenhall didn’t respond; he just looked at Jack and Carl and then slowly followed Jenks toward the raised acrylic cockpit of the Turtle.
Yoyo was lowered at fifteen feet per minute while Turtle zoomed around it in a spiral pattern, watching for telltale signs of leaking, which would be noticeable by small bubbles emanating from her titanium hull. Mendenhall momentarily felt dizzy as the fifteen-foot-long Turtle circled around the diving bell.
Sarah took active sonar soundings of the walls as they were lowered. The two professors watched out of their individual six-inch-thick portholes. They saw numerous fish, and took notes as to their species and the depth at which they were seen.
Sarah was writing down anomalies on her paper graph when she saw the sonar had picked up a large body of fish heading their way. She adjusted her headphones and placed the microphone close to her lips.
“Yoyo to Turtle, we have a large school of fish coming up on our starboard side, keep your eyes open,” she said as she leaned back and pointed out Ellenshaw’s window. She placed her hand over her mic. “Right out there,” she whispered.
“Right, Yoyo, maybe we can bring back supper to fry up,” Jenks called back.
Sarah didn’t respond. She reached out and placed her sonar on active to track the school continuously. Suddenly Ellenshaw gasped out loudly and even the reserved Keating let out his breath.
“Those ain’t no fish, they look like little scuba men,” Jenks called over the radio.
Sarah leaned forward and saw the water around the bell was being inundated by the small, amphibious monkeys. There were close to a hundred as they darted in and out of the exterior lights. Sarah laughed as she watched them play. Keating jumped back when one came close to the window, held onto the frame for a moment, and then quickly darted away. Ellenshaw observed with utter fascination while writing frantically in his notebook. His mouth was wide open as he found himself in a world of his dreams.
“Jack, Carl, are you picking this up?”
“We are, we just piped your camera shots through to the labs,” Jack called back.
“Should we snag one?” Jenks asked.
“NO!” Sarah and Jack said at the same time, almost cutting each other off.
“Chief, we’re not here to antagonize anything, you’re to observe only, are we clear on that?” Jack said.
“Clear, Major,” the master chief answered sadly.
As he watched, a large group of the amphibians broke away from the main group and circled the Turtle. They kept pace easily by using their webbed hands and feet. Their tails were in constant motion as they whipped back and forth, supplying them with tremendous speed. Jenks laughed as one cut in front of the submersible and was bumped softly by the hull, then grasped the edge of the cockpit and stared inside at the two men. Mendenhall had to smile at the comical expression of the animal that clearly said it didn’t know what had hit it. The monkey jabbered even while underwater, allowing a large flow of bubbles to escape its small mouth.
At the diving bell, the small creatures were hanging on in thick batches, trying to peer inside at the strangers to their underwater world. Sarah kept smiling and tapping on the glass, and the amphibians mimicked her action, in return tapping on the glass with their small claws.
A loud buzz sounded from her laptop. On the sonar graph she saw that it had picked up an anomaly on the far wall of the lagoon far below the opening behind the falls. She quickly noted the cave on the graph and marked its coordinates. Then, as she was about to turn back to her porthole, the computer chirped again. The sweep of sonar revealed a red blip coming at them from about five hundred yards. At that exact moment the small amphibians broke ranks and scattered in all directions. She looked at the sonar again; it was awash with tiny blips as the creatures fled. Their hasty retreat covered the red blip that had been there.
“Hey, what did Ellenshaw do, let them see his hair?” Jenks called jokingly over the radio.
Sarah didn’t answer, she had picked up the blip again at a hundred yards closer than it had been before. Whatever it was, it was fast.
“Chief, we have company coming, and coming fast from the northern part of the lagoon. I think it came from the area of the falls.”
Jenks didn’t respond as he stopped Turtle’s gentle spiral and turned her toward the possible threat.
Sarah continued to watch as the target blip suddenly plunged below them. It was coming upon them at over twenty-five knots, she calculated quickly.
“Jack, we may have the landlord coming at us here,” she said nervously into her microphone. “Whatever it is, it just went deep on us, it’s down below both vessels at three hundred feet and still diving. It’s not large enough for one of the plesiosaurs.”
The two professors unsnapped their lap belts and tried to peer though the portholes at what was below them, beyond the exterior floodlights.
“You two, strap yourselves back in!” she said louder than she’d intended.
“Major, start winching the bell back up,” Jenks called as he swung Turtle around a hundred degrees. He brought her airplanelike flaps up and applied thrust. Her water jet engine responded immediately.
“Roger, bringing her up,” Jack responded.
Sarah felt the winch engage. The depth of the bell started to decline, as indicated on her depth gauges. She saw the target was only a hundred yards away and now coming shallow. Jenks wouldn’t possibly get into position in time.
As Keating watched for any movement outside of his porthole, it was suddenly filled with a horrific face. He jumped back as the creature looked inside the interior of the bell. Sarah froze for a moment when she saw what had frightened the professor through the glass.
“Oh, my!” Ellenshaw said under his breath. The animal had swum quickly to his porthole and now he was face to face with it.
The creature had large black eyes and looked in with what Sarah thought was mere curiosity. The scales that covered its body were thick and appeared to be an exact match of the sample found on the body of the SEAL. The mouth opened and closed as its gills worked on either side just below the jawline. The back lower half of its head had a long row of leathery spines that angled downward. When the strange row of finlike spines was activated, they fanned out like a protective shield. The creature’s large handlike protrusions swirled back and forth in an effort to maintain its position in front of the porthole.
“Jesus Christ!” Jenks yelled into the radio. “What in the hell is that?”
“Stop and hold your position, Chief. Stay clear, it’s not aggressive, at least not yet,” Sarah called. “Jack, stop the winch,” she said calmly. Just a moment later they felt a small jerk as the bell came to a stop just above the layer where they started receiving refracted light from the surface.
“Look at it, its part human! It has to be! You can just feel and see the intelligence,” Ellenshaw said exuberantly.
“I agree, it’s studying us.” Keating was also mesmerized by the sight before him. “Professor, why would it have the spines running around the base of its head?”
“Your academic guess would be as good as mine, my friend. Perhaps they are a protective apparatus or simply a mating tool used by this animal.”
The creature suddenly moved away from the porthole and went deep. It reappeared in front of Sarah and she did her best not to react at its sudden arrival. The large head tilted, swinging the large spines that looked almost like braids. Being this close, Sarah could see the spines ended in clear, pointed spikes. The beast opened its mouth and she could see very small, almost clear teeth inside. The face had no scales to speak of. Its features were smooth and tinted a whitish light green color as compared to its body, which was a darker shade of green with swirling highlights of silver and gold.
“Jack, tell me you’re filming this,” she said.
“We got it. That has to be what pulled me from the water and killed that plesiosaur. Mendenhall, make sure you get some full body shots of this thing.”
�
��Filming with the nose camera,” the sergeant answered.
The creature swam from porthole to porthole, watching the bell’s occupants with immense curiosity. It kept reaching out only to be stopped by the glass. Then it slowly started backing away first by swirling its webbed fingers, and then by kicking with its powerful legs. It came up to the bubble canopy of the Turtle and swam in circles around it.
“Easy, Chief,” Sarah called. “It’s just showing you the same curiosity.”
“Yeah, you had a three-inch titanium fence around you, but this monstrosity could sink this aluminum coffin just by wishing real hard.”
“Really?” Mendenhall asked, not moving as the beast stopped and looked at him, only inches away.
The creature rubbed a hand over the canopy and then jerked it away. The master chief reduced power and the Turtle came to a hover fifty yards from Yoyo. The monster again reached out and touched the glass canopy just above Mendenhall’s head. It took all of the sergeant’s discipline not to duck as the eight-foot-long animal reached out. Then as suddenly as it had appeared, it darted off into the inkiness of the lagoon.
“That thing is five times faster than Turtle, Major. Get the bell up and out of here. We’ll stand by until she’s pulled aboard. Be careful and take it slow,” Jenks said.
Jack hit the switch again to bring Yoyo in, never so happy to obey an order from the crusty old master chief.
As Turtle slowly wound its way around the diving bell, Yoyo was slowly pulled up. Sarah plotted the downward-angled cave the sonar had picked up far below the falls that may be a prehistoric lava vent, but without seeing it firsthand she couldn’t be sure. But the water that flowed out of that particular vent was thirty degrees cooler than that of the lagoon at that depth.
The two professors were debating the existence of the animal they had just witnessed when a shudder coursed through the bell. Sarah held onto her clipboard full of calculations, and Ellenshaw and Keating stopped their bickering long enough to look above them at the rounded ceiling.
“Our visitor’s back. Goddammit, it’s messing with the umbilical lines!” the master chief called.
The creature first pulled on the steel cable, then on the rubber oxygen line, and then the electrical and oxygen lines together. It shook them lightly at first, then harder.
Sarah and the two professors were rocked in their seats as the bell was pulled from side to side. Then suddenly they stopped moving.
“It’s coming down the line toward the bell,” Jenks called.
The creature appeared at Ellenshaw’s window and then quickly darted away. Then Keating made a frightened puppy sound as the thing suddenly came up in front of him. The half-man, half-animal placed a hand on the glass and tilted its large head. The thick lips parted as its gills worked. The black eyes narrowed and blinked three sets of clear eyelids.
“I don’t care for this,” Ellenshaw said. “This behavior is not common to an animal in the wild. It should exhibit curiosity and then move on.”
“I agree, this is not right,” Keating said.
“Oh, now you agree. Jesus!” Sarah said in exasperation as the beast raised a webbed hand and struck the glass in front of Ellenshaw.
“Uh-oh,” Sarah said just as the beast struck the glass. “Jack, get us out of here!”
The bell immediately started to climb.
“It’s bashing the hull!” Jenks hollered.
The creature swiped at the glass, then the titanium bell, and quickly kicked out with its legs. It rose to the umbilicus again and started pulling and swiping at the cables in a maddened frenzy.
“That does it, it’s going to kill them,” Jenks said as he applied forward thrust to Turtle.
Mendenhall grabbed for the two handholds along the top of the canopy, pushed back in his seat by their sudden acceleration as they rushed toward Yoyo at full speed.
The beast pulled up suddenly as it was struck by the pressure wave sent out from the advancing Turtle. It stopped its attack and hovered for a moment, eyeing the threat coming at it. Then it swam back toward the bell, going from window to window to look into the interior. Then an explosion of bubbles came from its mouth as it reached out toward the window Ellenshaw was close to and struck it hard, rocking the bell from side to side. Finally it suddenly broke off the attack and vanished into the darkness in a swirl of bubbles.
“Beats the hell out of looking for Bigfoot, doesn’t it?” the shaking Keating said with a nervous chuckle.
Ellenshaw ignored the slight and continued to alternate between his window and the monitor mounted on the bell, trying desperately to find the beast once again.
“Okay, Jack, it’s off the scope, bring us up,” Sarah said as she slowly pulled off her headset and sank down into her seat.
Twenty minutes later, Sarah was back in Teacher, in navigation, plotting the underwater cave the sonar had picked up.
“It may just be an extinct lava vent, but look at this,” she pointed at the graph laid out on the large map table. They saw that her hand was still shaking slightly from their encounter in the water. “See how perfectly round this is? It’s about fifteen feet in diameter, I would say. I don’t know, Jack, but if I were forced to guess at this point, I would say that cave is man-made and not a lava vent at all.”
“Lieutenant, if I may point out, the depth on your graph indicates that vent is over four hundred feet below the surface of the lagoon. A task quite impossible for man to have carved it out,” Danielle said as she looked from Sarah to Carl and finally to Jack.
“Not if at one time this lagoon wasn’t here,” Sarah countered, holding the Frenchwoman’s eyes.
“What are you saying?” Jack asked.
“I have a theory, and it’s just a theory,” she said, “that maybe this used to be an open pit mine, a natural formation that was discovered and used by the Inca, or maybe another civilization. I had time to think about it and I think this lagoon is a natural geological feature. A caldera—a creater—of a volcano that isn’t quite extinct, but stable enough because the lava flow and steam vents act as a natural pressure relief valve, never allowing the volcanic pressures to build up to the point where it could erupt. My guess is a rough one, but I don’t think this once-active site has erupted for close to twelve or fifteen million years. And maybe, just maybe, the tributary and the river above the lagoon that creates the falls were once flowing in other directions. I think that at some later time they were diverted here to fill a man-made lake, this very lagoon.”
“What evidence is there that even hints at such an outrageous theory?”
Sarah didn’t answer Danielle’s question at first. She reached over and placed a CD into one of the networked players beside the navigation table. She hit a button and an underwater picture appeared.
“Now the absence of light hurts the quality of the video taken, but we got these on the way down before our visitor appeared. See this far wall—its about a hundred feet below the waterfall and two hundred above the cave opening, or lava vent. Now look at this,” she said as she used a pencil to trace a line that at first only she could see. The pencil point zigzagged as she moved it down the screen.
Jack and Carl didn’t see it at first. But then Jack noticed a formation that nature could never duplicate on its own. “A staircase?”
“Bingo.”
“Damn,” Carl and Danielle said at the same time at a pattern that was too precise not to be man-made.
“I must apologize, Lieutenant. You have a valid theory going here,” Danielle said as she studied the rock wall. “But why would men build a staircase underneath the water?”
“I need to go back down, Jack,” said Sarah.
Jack straightened and scratched his forehead. “Let’s just assume you’re right, that this vent is a man-made portal of some kind. I think we have enough to go on.”
“But if you were hesitant about going into the mine without an escape route, why does an underwater cave reassure you?” Danielle asked.
; “I’ll make a wager that the cave is a viable exit from the mines. Ancient man had a habit of doing impossible things, Ms. Serrate. For all we know, there is a pressure area just beyond that opening that holds the water back and keeps the shaft beyond dry.”
“Like a diver’s trunk on undersea platforms,” Carl volunteered.
Jack just nodded and looked at his watch. It was already well after three in the afternoon, but he wanted a few more answers now. He hit the intercom.
“Chief?”
“Yeah,” Jenks answered from engineering.
“You ready to take Snoopy for a walk to see what the hoopla was about for all these centuries?”
Farbeaux watched as Mendez squeezed his fat body into the wetsuit and as Rosolo placed a rubberized nylon bag on his dive belt and made sure it was secured properly. The other men sat about with their wetsuits on and checked their rebreathers. There were sixteen men in all, including him. Enough, Farbeaux thought, to almost guarantee a foul-up while traveling that long a distance underwater to the mine.
Santos was leaning out of the bridge window with his large cigar tucked into the corner of his smiling mouth. Farbeaux walked to the opposite side of the boat, where the remaining crew was bringing over some of the packed supplies from the anchored barge. He thought he saw something flash out of the corner of his eye. As he strained to see, the movement didn’t recur.
The commander of the assault element had been following the Rio Madonna for days. The track had been difficult to follow, but the colonel had been raised in the thick canopied forests of Brazil. He watched as his men performed their preparations deep inside the jungle.
“Are you ready?”
The small man walked up to the colonel but remained in the shadows. “We are ready.”
“The radios will have no trouble operating underneath this cursed tree canopy, so have it monitored closely. I will signal when it is time for you to move the men in force into the lagoon, are you clear on this?”
Legend: An Event Group Thriller Page 34