“You mean we may be the first to see it?” Malcom asked.
“Since the Ancient Ones who lived here left it,” Brody answered. “I wonder if they…”
“They what?”
“No one knows where the Ancient Ones went, or why they left so suddenly. They just up and abandoned Mesa Verde, and there are a lot of theories but no answers. Maybe this pueblo has answers. I have a buddy who works for the Park Service at Mesa Verde. He’s an archaeologist. I should call him and ask about this one.”
“Wait. This could be something to make us some money. Didn’t all those old Indians have gold and silver? What if it’s still here? I mean, if no one knows about it. And besides, I bet my hat’s in there. I’ve at least got to go see if I can find it.”
“Don’t believe all you hear about gold and silver. Silver, maybe. More likely copper and maybe some turquoise. I don’t know if the Anasazi traded with outsiders or not. Let’s go ahead and look for your hat and then get those strays back to the ranch. When we get back, I’ll call my buddy.”
“As long as you don’t tell him exactly where it is,” Malcom answered. Brody could see the gleam of gold fever in his eyes.
“Okay. Come on, let’s go find your hat.”
The climb to the cliff dwelling was easier than the descent to the bottom of the canyon had been. A hand-and-toe ladder had been carved into the vertical stretches of sandstone, and worn paths angled up in a switch-back fashion where possible. The hard part was staying on the cliff-face while being buffeted by the stinging sand particles borne on the wind. However, they reached the village in short order and began exploring.
In the center of the pueblo, they found the kiva – the underground circular vault used by Puebloans for spiritual ceremonies and political meetings. It was easy enough to spot, as the wind led straight to it and poured in through an area of the roof that had fallen – in a sort of tornado-like spiral dust devil.
Brody felt a supernatural chill and shivered despite the ninety-degree heat being only slightly lower here in the canyon than on the mesa. “Dude, I’m not sure we should go in there. It’s sacred.”
Malcom turned an astonished gaze on him. “Sacred! I didn’t know you were religious.”
“I’m not. But there are things about my people and our ancestors that you don’t know. It kind of creeps me out to enter a kiva uninvited.”
“Who the hell’s going to invite you? In case you haven’t noticed, this place has been deserted for a very long time,” Malcom huffed. “I’m going in.”
Brody took a breath in and shook his head, gripping the side of the cliff for balance. “Suit yourself, but I’m not going anywhere near that kiva.”
Brody watched as Malcom circled the kiva until he found the ladder leading down into the cylindrical structure. It was made of stones piled together without mortar, but carved into the bedrock so that the above-ground enclosure was only half the total height. It was roofed with saplings laid in a flattish conical manner, with a ladder leading down into it through an opening in the roof. As they had noticed, part of the roof was missing toward the open side of the pueblo, where the wind was pouring in. The normal entrance was on the opposite side.
Brody approached more reluctantly, only rushing to the ladder when he heard a shout from within. He scrambled to the top and looked down into the gloom, but couldn’t see Malcom. The wind in the kiva was circling like a tiny tornado.
“Malcom! Are you okay? What’s happening?”
There was no answer.
“Malcom! Are you hurt?”
Just then, a flash of white startled Brody into ducking away from the kiva entrance. To his horror, he realized it was Malcom’s face, frozen in a rictus of fear.
“Malcom!” Brody shot back up the ladder so quickly he nearly fell into the kiva. As he watched, tracking Malcom’s body as it circled lower and lower, he feared Malcom was dead.
But how?
And then, his eyes finally adjusted to the darkness, dread stole over him as he saw Malcom’s body sucked into the largest sipapu he’d ever seen, in the floor of the kiva. From inside, a wail of dread and terror rang out and echoed up the sipapu then tumbled into the circling wind in the kiva.
What the hell? Could Malcom still be alive?
Brody scrambled back down the ladder and ran to the edge of the pueblo. Climbing back up the cliff side as fast as he could, he could think of nothing but riding back to the bunkhouse at full gallop and gathering others to go and rescue Malcom. A superstitious dread overcame him halfway up.
His mind returned to the stories his father used to tell him of the Navajo witches who once protected and now haunted ancient kivas. Known as Skinwalkers, they represented the antithesis of Navajo cultural values. They were the evil reflections of goodly medicine men and women, performing twisted ceremonies and manipulating magic in a perversion of the good works medicine people traditionally performed. In order to practice their good works, traditional healers learn about both good and evil magic. Most could handle the responsibility, but some became corrupt and tormented.
Could there still be Skinwalkers inside?
He could think of only one person who might have answers. His best friend from high school, Kevin, had once jokingly told him to call if he ever found a big sipapu. He’d bet his life this one qualified. The sipapu was a hole in the ground, usually no bigger than a finger, located at the center of every kiva. It was a ceremonial reminder of the place where Southwestern Indians emerged back into the world after their long migration underground.
Only then did he notice that the weird wind was dying down. By the time he’d scaled the canyon wall and got back to his horse, it was completely gone. There was no sign a wind had ever scoured the top of the mesa, stolen a Stetson, and most likely led a man to his death.
Chapter Seven
It was 6:25 a.m. when the Saharan Bucket arrived on the scene and a little over twenty-six hours since the Gordoye Dostizheniye sank. The 55,000-ton deep sea dredging vessel had been seconded from its port of Anchorage in Alaska, where it was in the process of clearing glacial silt from the entrance to the harbor.
Sam Reilly watched as the mammoth vessel came alongside the Maria Helena. It was at least four hundred feet long with a bridge tower standing five stories above its deck. Along the deck were a series of giant pipes protruding twenty feet into the air, connected to muscular engines and designed to pump the sand and debris from the seabed.
The inflatable Zodiac was lowered into the water and Tom ran Sam across to the Saharan Bucket. The swell of the shallow water of the Bering Strait had picked up, but was still relatively mild, and the little runabout skimmed across the ripples.
Sam thanked Tom for the lift and climbed the steel ladder fixed to the side of the dredging ship’s starboard hull. Behind him, he heard the small motor of the runabout increase its pitch as Tom returned to the Maria Helena to continue a progressively wider search pattern of the surrounding area for the Gordoye Dostizheniye.
He reached the top of the ladder and climbed over the gunwale onto the deck.
“Sam Reilly?” A man in his late forties, with a well-groomed dark beard greeted him.
“That’s me.” Sam smiled, politely and offered his right hand.
The man took it in callused hands and shook, warmly. “Brendan Miller. Captain of this fine vessel.”
“Thanks for getting here so quickly.” Sam glanced at the array of powerful machinery that lined the deck. It all appeared so well maintained and clean that it would have brought a smile to the face of the matron of any military hospital. “You made good time from Anchorage.”
“Like every sailor, we’re still praying for survivors.”
“All right. Let’s get started.” Sam breathed in deeply through his pursed lips. “I should let you know there’s minimal chance of finding any survivors, but you never know. If there’s any, it would be impossible without your vessel to reach them.”
“Why is that?”
; “It’s a strange theory and might require some sort of leap of faith.”
“Go on.” The captain turned to walk. “You can tell me on the way to the bridge.”
Sam followed. “When we arrived here in the early hours of yesterday morning, the sea was perfectly still. There was no evidence of any wreckage, or maelstrom. No icebergs. And yet, a moderate sized cargo ship apparently disappeared beneath the sea within minutes.”
“Okay, I’m listening. What do you think happened?”
“There was a tectonic shift.”
“An earthquake?”
“Nothing too dramatic. Just a simple rumble of tectonic plates. The result of the movement caused a sinkhole in the seabed below, which then drew trillions of gallons of seawater inside. During the subsequent vortex, the Gordoye Dostizheniye was pulled under. Seismic monitors recorded a minor tremblor.”
The captain’s thick bushy eyebrows narrowed. “But you haven’t located the ship yet.”
“No. But we’ve found a large conical mound of sand.” Sam paused at the top of the third flight of stairs. “It’s a longshot, but if I’m right about the vortex theory – the only possible explanation for there being no flotsam or other evidence of the wreckage – then the wreckage of the Gordoye Dostizheniye is lying directly underneath that sand.”
“You think the sand is covering the bridge tower?”
Sam shook his head. “Not immediately beneath it. We’ve already used ground penetrating radar. The mound is filled with loose sand. But I’m hoping we’ll find a cargo ship buried somewhere below that mound.”
“Like you said, it requires a leap of faith.” Miller shrugged. “Without anything better to go off, I’m willing to take that leap.”
“Good,” Sam said. “And if the Gordoye Dostizheniye is buried… there might still be survivors trapped inside the hull.”
Chapter Eight
The bridge of the Saharan Bucket gave the Maria Helena a run for its money when it came to high tech gadgetry and information systems. Hydrographic grade multibeam echosounders, sub-bottom profilers and sound velocity profilers provided a visual masterpiece of the ground below in an array of colors.
The bathymetric image showed a series of colors at the warm end of the spectrum – reds, orange and yellows – depicting the shallow area of the Bering Strait. To the south, the image shifted through the greens and blues of deeper water. At the center of the image, a conical tower formed in yellow.
Sam stared at the image. “If that is the Gordoye Dostizheniye’s bridge tower, it’s so shallow I could reach it with a single breath.”
Captain Smith shook his head. “It also means that if anyone is trapped down there, they’re less than sixty feet from the surface and completely helpless.”
“All right. Let’s see what your machine can do to help them.”
The captain made a few signals and the large auger dredge was lowered from a gigantic crane at the bow into the ocean. The head functioned like a cutter suction dredger, but instead the cutting tool was a rotating Archimedean screw set at right angles to the suction pipe. The dredge was a self-propelled version that allowed the system to propel itself without the use of anchors or cables.
The entire ship vibrated under the strain and a few moments later, Sam watched as thousands of gallons of sand and water was expelled a hundred feet into the air aft of the Saharan Bucket.
Captain Miller noticed his curiosity, and said, “The turbidity shroud on auger dredge systems creates a strong suction vacuum, causing much less turbidity than the conical basket-type cutter-head and so they are preferred for environmental applications. The vacuum created by the shroud and the ability to convey material to the pump faster makes auger dredge systems more productive than similar sized conical type cutter-head dredgers.”
Sam grinned, like a kid in a candy shop. “Nice piece of gear you’ve got here.”
“You’d better believe it. Some of the best dredgers in the world are up here. It’s because of the glacial silt.”
“Really? What about it?”
“As the name suggests, the silt is formed by fine particles of rock ground by the movement of glaciers. The particles become fine and powdery, but microscopically more accurately resemble razor sharp gravel.”
“So, it’s damaging to machinery?” Sam asked, thankful that Tom had made the decision to back the Sea Witch II away from the cloud of glacial silt from the crest of the mound and protect the props from real harm.
Miller nodded. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
Sam ran his eyes over the rest of the display instruments. To the right were a series of computer screens that monitored the dredging equipment in relation to bathymetric images of the seafloor in a series of depth isobaths. The monitoring software then used Real Time Kinematic satellite navigation to accurately record where the machine had been operating and to what depth.
Sam watched clearly, as the auger head was positioned at the side of the conical tower of sand. The captain adjusted the position with the adept movements of a single hand on a joystick. The device moved forward and began devouring the sand.
Thirty minutes later the auger head was positioned in the middle of the empty pile of sand. Sam stared at the monitoring equipment. It was obvious the sand tower was nothing more than that. He asked, “Would you feel some sort of resistance if the device struck the metal of a ship?”
“Sure we would. There’d be vibrations following up the line that would try and tear my ship apart.”
“So, it’s just sand?”
Captain Smith crossed his arms. “I don’t know what to tell you Mr. Reilly. Really, I don’t. The sand’s soft. No doubt about it. The ground below has been recently stirred up. That’s for sure. But I couldn’t even hazard a guess about who or what did it.”
“Can you dredge any deeper?”
“To a point. We’re already forty feet below the seabed. More sand and debris will keep coming in the farther we go.”
“The recently turned over sand continues as deep as forty feet?”
“Yeah. Much deeper.” The captain nodded. “It’s as though an old gigantic sandworm just bored its way through the surface and swallowed the sea whole.”
“Would a submarine earthquake cause anything like that?”
“No. It would stir up the sand. That’s for sure. But that’s where the similarities end. This is almost a perfectly circular tunnel of weakened sand with the diameter of a quarter of a mile. More like a sinkhole than a shift in the tectonic plates.”
“You think it’s big enough to have swallowed a moderate sized cargo ship?”
The captain thought about it for a moment. “It would need to drag it down vertically – like stern or bow first, but, yeah… I think it’s possible. I’ve never seen or even heard of such a thing happening before, but it’s possible.”
Sam nodded. “Any idea what could have possibly caused such an event?”
The captain shook his head. “Beats the hell out of me.”
Chapter Nine
Big Diomede Island, Bering Strait
The senior foreman stared at the large chart pinned up on the wall opposite his desk. He drew a quick breath and shook his head in frustration. It depicted an overly simplistic vision of the various stages of the Transcontinental World Link. An idea which had been bandied about by politicians, engineers, and wealthy merchants since 1890, when the first Governor of the Colorado Territory, William Gilpin, first proposed the idea of a vast cosmopolitan railway linking the US with Europe in a series of railways. More than a century later, Russia, Canada and the US had finally agreed on putting that plan into practice.
It all appeared easy enough on paper. The Bering Strait crossing included a bridge and a tunnel spanning the relatively narrow and shallow waters between the Chukotka Peninsula in Russia and the Seward Peninsula in the U.S. state of Alaska. With the two Diomede Islands between the peninsulas, the Bering Strait could be spanned by a bridge and a tunnel. There would be one long brid
ge connecting Alaska and the Diomede Islands, and a tunnel connecting the Diomede Islands and Russia. The earth bored from the tunnel could be used as landfill to connect the two islands. So far, the project had faced repeated political, engineering, and financial setbacks. The original feasibility study overlooked the most complex unknown in the construction industry – people.
That’s where the problems occurred. It had already been a frustrating day for Michael Gallagher, the foreman of the Canadian-led heavy construction crew. He ran the palm of his hand through what remained of his rapidly thinning, gray hair. He had as much respect as anyone for the First Peoples, but those on this god-forsaken rock of an island were driving him crazy.
Although the Russian-owned Big Diomede Island had been uninhabited by the native Yupik people since they were expelled during World War II, the tribal people who lived on its neighboring island of Little Diomede complained that the tunnel boring would disturb the soil, possibly releasing evil spirits into their world. They pointed to claims by distant relatives of the damage done by the US Northeast Cape Air Force Station on St. Lawrence Island in the Aleutian Islands during the Cold War causing cancer in the native population. The statistics eventually showed that their rates of illness were no higher than other people living in Alaska. Even so, the base was eventually removed and millions of dollars were spent on the cleanup.
The 110 permanent indigenous residents of Little Diomede challenged the Transcontinental World Link project. First, they’d delayed construction of the runway on the old site of the Russian military base. Even though the project had won the court battle, protesters often deliberately got in the way of the dangerous equipment, causing further delays. The foreman had dealt with clearing the runway of trespassing protesters today already, so the plane carrying parts for his Big Bertha class tunnel boring machine could be landed.
The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 3 Page 31
