Atlantis Found

by Clive Cussler

  Then he turned back to Ambrose and Marquez. "Sorry to disappoint you, fellows, but if you think you're going to die, forget it. I'll be back for you in fifteen minutes."

  "Please make it less." Marquez stared back from a face as gray as the granite. "The water will be over our heads in twenty minutes."

  "Then I suggest you stand on tiptoe."

  Taking Pat by the hand, the man from NUMA slipped beneath the water and disappeared in the murky water.

  Keeping the beam of his dive light aimed ahead in the tunnel, the diver followed one of the illuminated lines displayed on his little computer. Looking up from the tiny monitor, he aimed his dive light ahead into the tunnel and swam toward the forbidding shadows. The water had risen to the roof of the tunnel, and the surge he'd experienced earlier had fallen off. He stroked and kicked his fins mightily through the flooded cavern, dragging Pat behind him.

  Stealing a quick glance backward, he saw that her eyes were tightly closed, her hands clinging to his weight belt in a death grip. The eyes never opened, even as the mouthpiece to the air regulator was passed back and forth.

  His decision to rely on a simple U.S. Divers' Scan face mask and a standard U.S. Diver's Aquarius scuba air regulator instead of his old reliable Mark II full face mask turned out to be wise. Traveling light made it easier for him to swim nearly half a mile through a maze of underground passages from the Buccaneer Mine, many partially filled with fallen rock and timbers. There were also dry galleries the flooding water had not yet reached, where he had to crawl and walk. Trudging over ore car rails and ties and fallen rock while toting bulky air tanks, buoyancy compensator, various gauges, a knife, and a belt loaded with lead weights was not an easy chore. The water was icy cold, but he stayed warm inside his DUI Norseman dry suit during the passages he was forced to swim. He had chosen the Norseman because it had greater ease of movement when he was out of the water.

  The water was turbid and the beam from the dive light, cutting a swath in the liquid void, penetrated only ten feet into the murk. He counted the shoring timbers as they passed, trying to gain a perspective on how far they had traveled. At last the tunnel made a sharp turn and ended in a gallery that led to a vertical shaft. He entered the shaft and felt as if he had been swallowed by an alien monster from the depths.

  Two minutes later, they broke the surface, and he aimed the dive light into the black above. A horizontal tunnel leading on to the next level of the Paradise Mine beckoned forty feet above.

  Pat smoothed the hair from her face and stared wide-eyed at him. It was then he saw that her eyes were a lovely shade of olive green. "We made it," she gasped, coughing and spitting water from her mouth. "You knew about this shaft?"

  Holding up the directional computer, he said, "This little gem led the way." He placed her hands on the slimy rungs of a badly rusted ladder leading upward. "Do you think you can make it up to the next level on your own?"

  "I'll fly if I have to," said Pat, overjoyed at being free of the hideous chamber and knowing she was still alive, with a chance, albeit a slim one, of eventually becoming a senior citizen.

  "As you climb the ladder, pull yourself up with your hands on the vertical bars, and mind you don't step in the center of the rungs. They're old and probably half rusted through. So go carefully."

  "I'll make it. I wouldn't dare mess up. Not after you got me this far."

  He handed her a small outdoorsman butane lighter. "Take this, find some dry wood from a timber, and start a fire. You've been exposed to the cold water much too long."

  As he pulled the dive mask back down over his face and prepared to duck under that water again, her hand suddenly tightened around his wrist. She felt drawn into the opaline green eyes. "You're going back after the others?"

  He nodded and threw her a smile of encouragement. "I'll get them out. Don't worry. There's still time."

  "You never told me who you are."

  "My name is Dirk Pitt," he said. Then, the mouthpiece reinserted, he gave a brief wave and vanished into the murky water.

  The water had reached the shoulders of the men in the ancient chamber. The terror of claustrophobia seemed to rise along with the water. All barbs of panic had receded as Ambrose and Marquez quietly accepted their fate in their private Hades deep inside the earth. Marquez chose to fight to the last breath, while Ambrose silently embraced a diehard death. He steeled himself to swim down through the cleft into the tunnel and go until his lungs gave out.

  "He's not coming back, is he?" Marquez mumbled.

  "Doesn't look like it, or else he won't make it in time. He probably thought it best to give us false hope."

  "Funny, I had a gut feeling we could trust the guy."

  "Maybe we still can," said Ambrose, seeing what looked like a glowworm approaching from under the water.

  "Thank God!" gasped Marquez as the beam from the halogen dive light refracted and danced off the ceiling and walls of the chamber just before Pitt's head broke water. "You came back!"

  "Was there ever a doubt?" Pitt asked lightly.

  "Where is Pat?" demanded Ambrose, as Pitt's eyes met his through the plate of the dive mask.

  "Safe," Pitt said briefly. "There's a dry shaft about eighty feet down the tunnel."

  "I know the one," acknowledged Marquez, his words barely intelligible. "It leads to the next level of the Paradise."

  Identifying the obvious signs of hypothermia in the miner, the drowsiness, the confusion, Pitt elected to take him instead of Ambrose, who was in the better shape of the two. He had to be quick, because the numbing cold had tightened its grip and was draining the life out of them. "You're next, Mr. Marquez."

  "I may panic and pass out when I'm submerged," Marquez moaned.

  Pitt gripped him on the shoulder. "Pretend you're floating in the water off Waikiki Beach."

  "Good luck," said Ambrose.

  Pitt grinned and gave the anthropologist a friendly tap on the shoulder. "Don't go away."

  "I'll wait right here."

  Pitt nodded at Marquez. "All right, pal, let's do it."

  The trip went smoothly. Pitt put all his strength into reaching the shaft as quickly as possible. He could see that unless the miner got dry soon, he would lose consciousness. For a man afraid of water, Marquez was game. He'd take a deep breath from the regulator and dutifully pass it back to Pitt without missing a beat.

  When they came to the ladder, Pitt helped push Marquez up the first few rungs until he was completely out of the cold water. "Do you think you can make it up to the next tunnel on your own?"

  "I'll have to," Marquez stammered, fighting the cold that had seeped into his veins. "I'm not about to give up now."

  Pitt left him and returned for Ambrose, who was beginning to look cadaverous from the effects of the icy water. Hypothermia from the cold water had lowered his body temperature to ninety-two degrees.

  Another two-degree drop and he would be unconscious. Five more minutes and it would have been too late. The water was only inches away from the chamber's ceiling. Pitt didn't waste time in talk, but shoved the mouthpiece into the anthropologist's mouth and pulled him down into the cleft and out into the tunnel.

  Fifteen minutes later, they were all grouped around a fire that Pat had managed to ignite from scraps of wood she'd found in a nearby crosscut passage. Scrounging about, Pitt soon discovered several old, fallen timbers that had remained dry over the years the mine had been abandoned. It wasn't long before the tunnel was turned into a blazing furnace and the survivors from the inundated chamber began to thaw out. Marquez began to look human again. Pat rebounded and was her old happy self as she vigorously massaged Ambrose's frozen feet.

  While they treasured the warmth of the fire, Pitt busied himself with the computer, planning a circuitous route through the mine to the ground above. The Telluride valley was a virtual honeycomb of old mines.

  The shafts, crosscuts, drifts, and tunnels totaled more than 360 miles. Pitt marveled that the valley hadn't collapsed like a
wet sponge. He allowed everyone to rest and dry out for close to an hour before he reminded them that they weren't out of the woods yet.

  "If we want to see blue skies again, we'll have to follow an escape plan."

  "What's the urgency?" shrugged Marquez. "All we have to do is follow this tunnel to the entrance shaft and then sit it out until rescuers dig through the avalanche."

  "I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings," Pitt said, his voice grim, "but not only were rescuers finding it impossible to get their heavy equipment through twenty feet of snow up to the mine on a narrow road, they were pulled from the search because of rising air temperatures that were increasing the chances of another avalanche. There is no telling how many days or weeks it will take for them to clear a path to the mine entrance."

  Marquez stared into the fire, picturing the conditions topside in his mind. "Everything is going against us," he said quietly.

  "We have heat and drinking water, however silty," said Pat. "Surely, we can exist without food for as long as it takes."

  Ambrose smiled faintly. "Sixty to seventy days is what it generally takes to starve to death."

  "Or we could hike out while we're still healthy," offered Pitt.

  Marquez shook his head. "You know better than anyone, the only tunnel that leads from the Buccaneer Mine to the Pandora is flooded. We can't get through the way you came."

  "Certainly not without proper diving gear," added Ambrose.

  "True," Pitt admitted. "But relying on my computerized road map, I estimate there are at least two dozen other dry tunnels and shafts on upper levels that we can use to reach the ground surface."

  "That makes sense," said Marquez. "Except that most of those tunnels have collapsed over the past ninety years."

  "Still," said Ambrose, "it beats sitting around playing charades for the next month."

  "I'm with you," Pat agreed. "I've had my fill of old mine shafts for one day."

  Her words prompted Pitt to walk over to the edge of the shaft and peer down. The flickering flames from the fire reflected off the water that had risen to within three feet of the tunnel floor. "We don't have a choice. The water will spill out of the shaft in another twenty minutes."

  Marquez stepped beside him and stared at the turbid water. "It's crazy," he muttered. "After all these years, to see water flooding up to this level of the mine. It looks like my days of gemstone mining are over."

  "One of the waterways that run under the mountain must have broken through into the mine during the earthquake."

  "That was no earthquake," said Marquez angrily. "That was a dynamite charge."

  "You're saying explosives caused the flooding and cave-in?" asked Pitt.

  "I'm sure of it." He peered at Pitt, eyes suddenly narrowed. "I'd bet my claim that somebody else was in the mine."

  Pitt stared at the menacing water. "If that's the case," he said pensively, "that somebody wants all three of you very dead."

  <<5>>

  "You lead off," PITT ordered Marquez. "We'll walk behind the beam of your miner's lamp until its batteries give out. Then we go the rest of the way on my dive light."

  "Climbing to the upper levels through shafts will be the tough part," said the miner. "So far we've been lucky. Very few shafts had a ladder. Most of them used hoists to transport the miners and ore."

  "We'll tackle that problem when we face it," said Pitt.

  It was five o'clock in the afternoon when they set out through the tunnel, heading west as indicated on Pitt's dive compass. He looked odd, hiking through the tunnel in his dry suit, gloves, and Servus dive boots with steel toes. He carried only the computer, compass, underwater dive light, and the knife strapped to his right leg. He left the rest of his gear beside the dying embers of the fire.

  The tunnel was clear of debris and the first hundred yards were fairly easy. Marquez led the way, followed by Pat and Ambrose, with Pitt bringing up the rear. There was enough walking room between the ore car tracks and the tunnel wall, making it unnecessary to step and stumble over the rail ties. They passed one shaft, then two, that were empty and lacking any means of climbing to the next level. They came to a small open gallery with three tunnels leading off into the darkness.

  "If I remember the mine's layout correctly," said Marquez, "we take the tunnel that angles to the left."

  Pitt consulted his trusty computer. "Right on the money."

  Another fifty yards and they came to a rockfall. The amount of loose rock was not massive, and the men set to work digging a crawl space. An hour of effort and a quart of sweat later, they had gouged an opening big enough for all to snake through. The tunnel led to another chamber, this one with a shaft leading to an old hoist that was still in place. Pitt shined his light into the vertical passage. It was like looking into a bottomless pit upside down. The top lay far out of the range of the beam. But this shaft looked promising. A maintenance ladder was gripping one wall, and the cables that once lowered and raised the lift cages were still hanging in place.

  "This is as good as it gets," said Pitt.

  "I hope the ladder is sound," said Ambrose, grabbing the vertical sides and giving it a shake. It trembled like a bow from the base up until it vanished in the darkness. "My days of climbing hand over hand up old slimy cables are long gone."

  "I'll go first," Pitt said, sliding a thong on the dive light's handle around his wrist.

  "Mind the first step," Pat said, with a faint smile.

  Pitt looked into her eyes and saw genuine concern. "The last step is the one that worries me most."

  He gripped the ladder, climbed several rungs, and hesitated, not happy about the wobble. He pressed on, keeping an eye on the hoist cables hanging only an arm's length away. If the ladder gave way, he could at least reach out and stop his fall with one of the cables. He ascended slowly, one rung at a time, testing each one before giving it his full weight. He could have moved much faster, but he had to be sure the others could safely follow him.

  Fifty feet above the people watching him in rapt suspense, he stopped and beamed his light up the shaft. The ladder abruptly ended only six feet ahead of him, but twelve feet below the floor of the tunnel above. Climbing two more rungs, Pitt extended an arm and grasped one of the cables. The woven strands were five-eighths of an inch thick, ideal for a good grip. He released his hold on the ladder and hauled himself hand over hand up the cable until he was four feet above the level of the tunnel floor. Then he swayed back and forth in an arc, gaining a couple of feet with each sweep before finally jumping onto solid rock.

  "How is it?" shouted Marquez.

  "The ladder is broken off just below the tunnel, but I can pull you the rest of the way. Send up Dr.

  O'Connell."

  As Pat climbed toward Pitt's light, propped with its beam pointing down the shaft, she could hear him pounding something with a rock. By the time she reached the last rung, he had chiseled a pair of handgrips into some old timber and lowered it over the edge.

  "Grab hold of the center board with both hands and hold on."

  She did as she was ordered without protest and was quickly dragged onto firm ground. Minutes later, Marquez and Ambrose were standing in the tunnel beside her. Pitt aimed his light up the tunnel as far as the beam could penetrate and saw that it was clear of rockfalls. Then he switched it off to conserve the batteries.

  "After you, Marquez."

  "I probed this tunnel three years ago. If I remember correctly, it leads straight to the Paradise entrance shaft."

  "Can't get out that way because of the avalanche," said Ambrose.

  "We can bypass it," Pitt said, studying the monitor of the computer. "If we take the next crosscut and go a hundred and fifty yards, it meets a tunnel from a mine called the North Star."

  "What exactly is a crosscut?" asked Pat.

  "Access through perpendicular veins driven at right angles to a working tunnel. They're used for ventilation and communication between digging operations," answered Marquez. He looked at Pitt
doubtfully. "I've never seen such a passage, which doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but it's probably filled in."

  "Then keep a sharp eye along the tunnel wall on your left," advised Pitt.

  Marquez nodded silently and set off into the darkness, his miner's lamp lighting the way. The tunnel stretched on and seemed endless. At one point, Marquez stopped and asked Pitt to shine his stronger beam at a rock fill between the timbers.

  "This looks like what we're looking for," he said, pointing to a hard granite arch above the loose rock.

  The men immediately went to work clearing the debris. After several minutes, they had dug through.

  Pitt leaned in and aimed his beam into a passage barely large enough to walk through. Then he checked his compass. "It heads in the right direction. Let's clear a crawl space and keep going."

  This tunnel was narrower than the others, and they were forced to step over the ties supporting the ore cart tracks, making the going slow and torturous. An hour of endless walking over the tracks in the gloom, with only the miner's lamp for illumination, sapped what little stamina they had left. Everyone caught their feet on the uneven ties and stumbled one step for every five that were unimpeded.

  Another cave-in that could not be penetrated caused a seemingly endless detour that cost almost two hours. Finally, they were able to bypass through a shaft that sloped up three more levels before ending at a large gallery that contained the corroded remains of a steam hoist. They struggled up to the top and trudged past the great steam cylinders and reels still holding a mile of cable.

  The strain of the past few hours was beginning to show on Marquez. He was in good shape for his age, but he was not conditioned for the exertion and emotional stress he had endured the last several hours. Ambrose, though, looked as though he were on a walk in a park. He appeared remarkably calm and unruffled for a classroom professor. The only amusement came from Pitt's mumbled curses. At his six feet three, the hard hat, loaned to him by Pat because she was several inches shorter, struck overhead timbers with frustrating regularity.