Legend: An Event Group Thriller

by David L. Golemon

  “I was thinking,” Jack asked, “what would have made Captain Padilla take this particular tributary route instead of keeping with the main river?”

  “What do you mean?” Carl asked from the copilot’s seat.

  “It makes no sense, there had to have been something his scouts had seen that made Padilla choose this route over the Amazon, a peculiarity in the river perhaps, or a man-made object. I just don’t see him arbitrarily leaving the main river.”

  “I see what you mean and I don’t have a clue. If that’s the case, others in the five hundred years since would have seen the same thing and ventured down the tributary,” Carl said. “So whatever it was that drew him to it—”

  “Isn’t there anymore,” Jack finished for him.

  “Well, this is going to be one short-ass trip, boys. Look,” Jenks said as he throttled back on the engines.

  “What the hell, we must have taken the wrong route,” Carl exclaimed.

  Up ahead, Teacher was dwarfed by sheer rock walls in front of her. A waterfall splashed down and created a beautiful scene in front, but that was it. The tributary ended after only ten miles. Jenks looked down at the sonar picture.

  “She’s deep. We’ve gone from fifteen feet under the keel to thirty-five,” he reported. He reached down and pinged the bottom with a blast of sound, getting a clearer picture of the bottom landscape when the sound waves bounced back.

  “Lot of boulders and shit on the bottom, some pretty large schools of fish, but that’s about it. Wait a minute, look at this,” he said, tapping at the still shot of the computer-generated sonar picture. He used a cursor and backtracked a little. “That’s a weird-shaped rock.”

  “Damned near looks like a head, doesn’t it?” Carl ventured.

  Jack leaned in and nodded his agreement. The boulder, if that’s what it was, looked as if it were a head, with ears, nose, and everything.

  “Ah, sonar plays tricks on you sometimes, just a weird-shaped rock, that’s all.”

  “Chief, those fifteen fancy remote probes you have from TRW, I think its worth one to see what that is, I’m betting it’s something,” Jack said, still looking at the frozen sonar picture.

  “You’re betting about five thousand bucks, Major,” Jenks responded as he stuck a fresh cigar in his mouth. “I have only five that are programmed and operational; there were priorities in the work assigned the last two days.”

  Jack just looked at him.

  “You’re the boss, I’m only a galley slave,” Jenks acquiesced. “Toad, on your console, hit the button that says UDWTR Bay 3, will ya? It’s time to see if I trained you right the last few hours on the operation of our Snoop Dog.”

  Carl found the button and pushed it. Somewhere below they heard a short whine coming from somewhere. Then a small console popped up on the thick armrest of Everett’s chair. It was equipped with a small joystick. Jenks reached out and switched the main monitor between them to another channel, which was filled with static.

  “Now, raise the small plastic cover there,” he said.

  Carl saw the switch cover by the joystick and raised it. Underneath was a red push button that illuminated when the switch cover was raised.

  “Push it, Toad,” Jenks ordered.

  Carl pushed down until it clicked. They heard a gush of air and saw bubbles rise to the surface ahead of them.

  “Hey, hey, watch it, you’ll run her into the bank. Swing her around, swing her around!” Jenks called out loudly.

  “Shit!” Carl said as he saw on the monitor the little torpedo-shaped probe was heading for shallow water. He took the small joystick and twisted it to the left. The angle on the monitor changed and the compass located in digital form at the bottom of the screen swung from east to north to south.

  “Okay, Toad, now you’re headed right for us; twist the top of the joystick, that’s your speed control. Toad? Slow down, goddammit!”

  The picture angled right at Teacher, the tri-shaped hull clearly visible, the probe slowed.

  “Damn, kid, keep the speed down, will ya? Now, push down on the joystick. That controls your dive on the probe, push down for down, and pull up for—”

  “Up?” Carl said smartly.

  “I knew they made you an officer for a fuckin’ reason, Toad.”

  Carl turned the probe again until it started heading away and then threw the four-foot-long radio-controlled unit, dubbed “Snoopy,” which TRW had developed for the navy, into a spiral headed down, trailing her near-invisible fiber-optic power and control cable behind it.

  “You catch on fast, now try not to run it into the mud. We can still recover her and use her again. Major, ask that kid Mendenhall to get to the fantail and make ready to bring the probe aboard, and tell that army fella not to fall overboard, it’s heavy.”

  Jack did so using the intercom.

  On the monitor the picture grew darker. A light just under Snoopy’s nose came on with the use of an installed rheostat sensor that automatically lit up in darkness. The probe edged deeper with every turn it made, the small fins on the zero buoyancy craft keeping the device in a tight spiral. Jenks looked at the depth and called it out.

  “Ten feet to bottom, eight feet, six … ease up, Toad,” he said, watching the depth gauge and ignoring the picture. The probe slowed.

  “Let me tell you, for a dead-end tributary, I’m having one hell of a time keeping this thing trim. Every time I head east, it wants to keep going. There is really one bitch of a current out there,” Carl said as he fought the small joystick.

  Through the window, Jack could make out some sort of thick vegetation behind the wide waterfall. He then turned his attention to the computer screen.

  “Okay, you’re at four feet; level her off and come right three degrees. That should put you on top of our rock,” the master chief said.

  Snoopy banked to the right for a split second and then quickly righted itself on command from Carl. The light was picking up nothing but murky water and a fish now and then.

  “Where in the hell is it?” Jenks asked.

  The light picked up a darker outline ahead of Snoopy. Carl eased the probe forward, steering into the strengthening current. Finally the light picked out what looked like large teeth. Then the mouth and nose, large pointed ears, and eyes that stared back at them through the monitor. The head was at least ten feet tall and it looked as if there was even more buried under the mud.

  “Chief, can we pipe this through the boat into the science labs?”

  “Yeah,” Jenks said as he pushed a button labeled BOAT MONITORS. “There, now the whole ship can see Toad’s future father-in-law,” he said, laughing.

  Jack pushed the intercom. “Doctors, look at your monitors. Does anyone have any guesses?”

  The probe made a complete turn around the huge head, picking out other small details—the feathers coursing along powerful-looking arms, the breast piece which was made up of a different type of stone from the rest of the body. All around its circumference, only half of the stone was above the mud and silt of the river’s bottom; the rest disappeared into murk.

  “Can you see if the figure is holding something in its right hand?” asked the voice of Professor Ellenshaw over the speaker mounted next to Jack’s head.

  Snoopy swung down and traveled a few feet. The probe ran along the rather large belly of the statue and protruded above the mud. The images revealed that it was indeed holding something.

  “What do you think?” Carl asked.

  “A pitchfork?” Jenks suggested, adjusting the brightness on the monitor.

  “No, not that, but close,” Jack said as he flipped on the intercom. “Professor, we have a trident in the right hand and a battle-ax in the left, crossed over at the midsection; anything else is under the mud.”

  “Good, good, gentlemen. You have just proven beyond any doubt that at one time at least, the Inca had passed this way. They thought it important enough to leave some strong medicine here. That is the Incan god Supay, god of deat
h and lord of the underworld. Also the lord of all underground treasures,” Ellenshaw said in a mysterious voice.

  “I also believe this is Supay,” Professor Keating said from one of the labs.

  “I concur; the likeness etched in stone in front of us is exactly that, Supay,” the voice of Professor Nathan agreed. “God of the underworld.”

  “Nice,” mumbled Jenks.

  Jack was listening but at the same time studying the cliff walls above them. There were many large ledges, so it was completely possible for the statue to have broken, or have been knocked free from one of those outcroppings by an earthquake perhaps, or just erosion.

  “I think that would have been a guide, or at least reason enough, for Padilla’s expedition to sidetrack,” Carl said, still looking at the monitor.

  “But where in the hell did he go?” Jenks wondered. “Maybe they climbed out of here and over the cliffs and picked up the tributary at another point.”

  Jack didn’t say anything; he continued to look at the walls around Teacher. He left the cockpit and returned to the navigation section. There, he brought up other maps, selected the one he wanted, and clicked the mouse on the side of the navigation console. A U.S. Geological Survey map came up and on it Jack located the area where they were, thanks to their global positioning transponder. He traced the small tributary above them, the one that the waterfall was created from, and followed it. It routed right back to the main Amazon, in about a two-mile loop. He electronically sent the map to the console monitor up front and then went back to the cockpit.

  “I don’t think they climbed any cliffs; the small tributary that is responsible for the falls ahead, the Santos Negrón, is nothing but a hundred-milelong tributary that’s not even that old. It was created by flooding no more than five years ago. I think Padilla stuck to this tributary; it had to have been the only natural one in existence five hundred years ago.”

  “How did he and his people go forward, underwater?” Carl asked.

  “If not underwater, how about underground, or both?” Jack asked.

  Carl and Jenks didn’t say anything; they looked straight ahead toward the expanse of ancient and man-made falls.

  “But what are the odds that these waters would have covered by accident the very route that Padilla took?”

  Jack turned to see Danielle Serrate standing behind him, leaning into the hatchway.

  “Fluke,” Jack said. “The new tributary would run wherever rainfall had created a trough beyond where the Brazilian government had controlled the flooding. Once it reached this point in unsurveyed and unmapped land, they really didn’t care what new tributaries were created.”

  “I wouldn’t care to wager the house on that,” Danielle said. “Is that the American phrase, bet the house?”

  “Yeah, that’s what they say, but that’s exactly what I think we should do,” Carl said as he took a firm hold on Snoopy’s joystick and brought its nose up. The view on the monitor changed and the picture became brighter as the probe emerged from the murkiness of the bottom toward the surface. Jack patted Carl on the shoulder. Snoopy sped up east toward the falls that were now starting to rock the probe left to right with the turbulence of the falling water. Carl directed the probe ten feet deeper as it approached. The monitor was filled with white water and bubbles as the impact of the high-falling tributary struck the flat surface below it. Carl adjusted the trim and sent Snoopy ten feet deeper, still believing the impact of the water would be enough to damage the TRW probe. Suddenly Snoopy was into darker but calmer water, where it snagged on an obstruction as an alarm sounded on the console.

  “Whoa, cowboy, you rammed something. See if you can back her up some,” Jenks said.

  “Chief, how close can you get to the falls?” Jack asked.

  “I can take her right under if I want; that little water hose of a falls couldn’t dent this composite hull.”

  On the monitor Snoopy had successfully backed away and rose by fifteen feet to the surface.

  “What is that stuff?” Danielle asked.

  The master chief fired up Teacher’s engines and started edging the large boat toward the falling water.

  “It’s bushes, water plants, and vines, a thick curtain of them,” Carl described. “It’s a wall of them behind the falls; Snoopy was stopped by them. Goddamn, you may be right, Jack.”

  “Right about what, c’mon, what’s he right about?” Jenks said as Teacher slowly drifted toward the turbulence of the water.

  “He thinks he knows where and at what point our intrepid Captain Padilla disappeared into history, Chief,” Carl said as he brought Snoopy to the surface next to Teacher. “And look at the center there, it’s been recently penetrated; see where a lot of new growth has occurred? I suspect that weakened area tells us that Professor Zachary has been this way also.”

  “Ask Mendenhall to bring the probe aboard; she earned her keep,” Jenks said.

  Jack ordered Snoopy brought aboard.

  “Well, I suppose you want me to take Teacher through there?” Jenks asked.

  “It would probably take us over a day to hack our way through there, maybe get a couple of people hurt seriously with that falling water,” Jack said as he leaned in closer to view the falls ahead.

  “Wouldn’t the vines and plants be more damaged if Professor Zachary had come this way less than three months ago?” Carl asked.

  “Bubba, this is South America; the growth rate of plants down here can be measured in minutes, not days or months,” Jenks said.

  “Well, let’s go then,” Danielle urged.

  “Unless you don’t think the old girl has the wherewithal to punch her way through it, Chief,” Carl said without looking at Jenks.

  The master chief clamped his jaws down on his cigar. “You officers think you can play me like that? You think you can use that shit you learned at officers’ school,” he turned around and stared at Jack, “or West Point, in Psyops, to goad me into taking her through there?”

  “Not at all,” Jack replied quietly.

  Jenks looked at his digital controls on the panel in front of him and said nothing. While the others thought he was thinking it over, he was actually figuring the stress tolerances of Teacher’s composite hull. He was silent for two full minutes.

  “Major, Toad, get some help and lower the sail tower and jackstay; we’re riding too damned high to get her through that opening. We’re also going to put a lot of weight onto this girl’s ass.” The master chief saw the expressions of confusion from Jack and Danielle. “We have to take on one hell of a lot of ballast; we have to ride low, dangerously low, to get her through whatever that is up ahead,” he explained. “And it’s still no fucking guarantee we can do that. We may get through the opening and find a dead end fifty yards into it.”

  “Or, on a brighter note,” Carl said as he squeezed out of the copilot’s chair, “we just may fall off the edge of the world.”

  13

  Two hours had passed since the order was given to lower the radar tower and jackstay. Collins, Mendenhall, and Everett were on the upper deck of section four, bolting down the retractable tower that was now laying along two whole sections, while the rest of the crew was below making ready for a rough ride in case they ran into something other than a tunnel leading to the mysterious east end of the Rio Negro.

  Jack had been the first one to notice, but he kept working. It was Mendenhall who cleared his throat.

  “I see it, Sergeant,” said Jack. “Just stay busy like you don’t see them.”

  “How long have they been there?” Carl asked as he lashed down his last tie to the tower.

  “About twenty minutes that I know of; wouldn’t have noticed it at all if I hadn’t caught the sun gleaming off their glasses.”

  “With the tower down, so is our radar, so we won’t be able to confirm who they are,” Carl said, straightening.

  “Probably that boat and barge we saw on the river coming in this morning. Can’t you feel our friend Farbeaux c
lose by?”

  “I sure can,” Mendenhall said.

  “Come on, let’s get this show on the road,” Jack said as he headed for the hatch.

  “Stand by,” Jenks said into the intercom as he fired up both of the Cummings diesels. “Is our board green, Toad?”

  Carl checked the status of all hatches and windows. The companionways in between sections all read green—closed and secured.

  “Board is green, Chief.”

  “Major, pull down that jump seat in the aft bulkhead and strap yourself in; this could get bumpy and I don’t need you in my lap at the wrong time,” Jenks said as he lit his cigar and started Teacher forward toward the falls. “Everyone, strap in at whatever station you’re at. You can follow our progress on the nose camera at the bow; it promises to be the must-watch TV show of the year.” He laughed loudly as he throttled forward to two knots.

  In the sciences compartment, Sarah looked at Virginia and cringed. “That guy makes me a little nervous,” she said.

  “A little?” Virginia asked.

  “Here we go,” the master chief said as he eased back on the twin throttles and let Teacher’s forward momentum carry her into the falling water. Suddenly the boat rocked violently from side to side, just as Snoopy had done two hours earlier. The sound of water striking the hull was deafening, and all the while Jenks had a smile from ear to ear as he edged Teacher into the darkness.

  Carl reached out and flipped on the exterior running lights as water covered the acrylic windows in the bow. Jack flinched as the first of the water struck; he thought the nose glass would cave in. But the boat slid neatly through the falls. The roar slid down the entire length of Teacher as the crew felt every inch of her entry. Then the bushes and vines snagged her and she bounded to a stop. The chief bit down on his cigar and throttled her engines forward. Teacher lurched into the water plants and undergrowth, making a screeching sound as her hull came into contact.

  “There goes the paint job,” Jenks said loudly as he goosed the engines again.

  “Low ceiling!” Carl called loudly above the din of water striking the hull.