The hardrock acoustics made the exhaust blast echo in their ears. The beams from the headlights hopped up and down, striking the rails and overhead timbers like strobe lights. He narrowly missed an ore car that was sitting on the tracks and partially protruding from an intersecting tunnel. After riding up the gentle grade of a lift shaft, they reached the upper level to a mine that was labeled "The Citizen" on Pitt's directional computer. Pitt rolled to a stop where the tunnel met another at a fork and consulted the tiny monitor.
"Are we lost?" Pat queried above the rattle from the exhaust pipes.
"Another two hundred yards down the tunnel on the left and we should come to the end of the mine tunnel you said comes out under the New Sheridan Hotel."
"The entrance to the O'Reilly Claim was covered over a hundred years ago," said Marquez. "We'll never get out that way."
"Never hurts to look," said Pitt, shifting gears and easing the clutch on the Suzuki. He gave the bike a burst of speed and was forced to brake hard within two minutes, when he suddenly confronted a brick wall that solidly blocked the old mine entrance. He came to an abrupt stop, leaned the bike against a timber, and studied the bricks under the headlight.
"We'll have to find another way," said Marquez, as he pulled alongside, came to a stop, and set both feet on the ground to keep the bike upright. "We've come out at the basement foundation wall of the hotel."
Pitt appeared not to have heard him. As if his mind was a thousand miles away, he slowly reached out and ran his hand over the old kiln dried red bricks. He turned as Pat stopped her bike and turned off the ignition.
"Where do we go now?" she asked, her voice betraying near-total exhaustion.
Pitt spoke without turning. "There," he answered offhandedly, pointing in the general direction of the brick wall. "I suggest you both move your bikes to the side of the tunnel."
Pat and Marquez didn't get it. They still didn't get it after Pitt climbed on the Suzuki, revved up the engine, and spun gravel under the rear wheel as he rode back into the tunnel. After a short minute, he was heard accelerating down the tracks toward them, the Suzuki's headlight beam dancing madly off the timbers.
Marquez reckoned Pitt was doing nearly thirty miles an hour when he thrust out his legs and dug his heels onto the twin ore cart rails less than ten yards from the wall, released his grip on the hand controls, and stood up, allowing the Suzuki to speed on from under him. Slumped backward to compensate for his momentum, he actually remained upright for nearly twenty feet before his feet slipped off the rails and he folded into a ball before tumbling through the tunnel like a soccer ball.
The motorcycle stayed on its wheels, but was just starting to lie on its side when it crashed into the brick wall with a protesting screech of metal and a cloud of dust, before bursting through the old decaying bricks and vanishing into the void beyond.
Pat ran over to Pitt's body, which had skidded to a stop and was sprawled on the ground. She would have sworn he had killed himself, but he looked up at her, blood streaming from a gash on his chin, and grinned like a madman. "Let's see Evel Knievel try that one," he said.
Pat stared down at him in amazement. "I can't believe you didn't break every bone in your body."
"None broken," he muttered in pain, as he slowly rose to his feet. "But I think I bent a few."
"That was the craziest thing I ever saw," mumbled Marquez.
"Maybe, but it worked better than I expected." Pitt, clutching his right shoulder, nodded at the hole in the brick wall. He stood there, getting his breath and waiting for the pain from bruised ribs and a dislocated shoulder to ease, while Marquez began pulling away the bricks loosened by the bike's passage to enlarge the entry.
The miner peered around the fractured wall and aimed his miner's lamp inside. After a few seconds, he looked back and said, "I think we're in deep trouble."
"Why?" asked Pat. "Can't we get out that way?"
"We can get out," said Marquez, "but it's going to cost us big time."
"Cost?"
Pitt limped painfully to the opening and peered inside. "Oh, no," he groaned.
"What is it?" Pat demanded in exasperation.
"The motorcycle," said Pitt. "It crashed into the wine cellar of the hotel restaurant. There must be a hundred broken bottles of vintage wine flowing down a drain in the floor."
<<6>>
Sheriff James Eagan, J R., was directing the rescue operation at the Paradise Mine when he received the call from his dispatcher informing him that Luis Marquez was being held in custody by the Telluride town marshal's deputies at the New Sheridan Hotel for breaking and entering. Eagan was incredulous.
How was this possible? Marquezs wife had been adamant in claiming her husband and two others were trapped inside the mine by the avalanche. Against his better judgment, Eagan turned over command of the rescue operation and drove down the mountain to the hotel.
The last thing he expected to find was a mangled motorcycle sitting amid several cases of smashed bottles of wine. His astonishment broadened when he stepped into the hotel's conference room to confront the confessed culprits and found three damp, dirty, and bedraggled people, two men and one woman, one of them wearing a torn and tattered diver's wet suit. All were in handcuffs and in the custody of two deputy marshals, who stood with solemn expressions on their faces. One of them nodded at Pitt.
"This one was carrying an arsenal."
"You have his weapons?" Eagan asked officially.
The deputy nodded and held up three Para-Ordnance .45-caliber automatics.
Satisfied, Eagan turned his attention to Luis Marquez. "How in hell did you get out of the mine and wind up here?" he demanded in complete bewilderment.
"It doesn't matter!" Marquez snapped back. "You and your deputies have got to go down the tunnel.
You'll find two dead bodies and a college professor, Dr. Ambrose, who we left guarding a killer."
There was a genuine feeling of skepticism, almost total disbelief, in Sheriff Jim Eagan's mind as he sat down, tipped his chair back on two legs, and pulled a notebook from the breast pocket of his shirt.
"Suppose you tell me just what is going on here."
Desperately, Marquez gave a brief account of the cave-in and flooding, Pitt's fortuitous appearance, their escape from the mysterious chamber, the encounter with the three murderers, and their forced entry into the wine cellar of the hotel.
At first the details came slowly, as Marquez fought off the effects of strain and exhaustion. Then his words flowed faster as he sensed Eagan's obvious doubt. Frustration swelled and was replaced by urgency, as Marquez pleaded with Eagan to rescue Tom Ambrose. "Dammit, Jim, stop being stubborn.
Get off your butt and go see for yourself."
Eagan knew Marquez and respected him as a man of integrity, but his story was too far-fetched to buy without proof. "Black obsidian skulls, indecipherable writings in a chamber carved a thousand feet into the mountain, murderers roaming mine shafts on motorcycles. If what you tell me is true, it will be the three of you who will be under suspicion for murder."
"Mr. Marquez has told you the honest truth," said Pat slowly, speaking for the first time. "Why can't you believe him?"
"And you are?"
"Patricia O'Connell," she said wearily. "I'm with the University of Pennsylvania."
"And what is your reason for being in the mine?"
"My field is ancient languages. I was asked to come to Telluride and decipher the strange inscriptions Mr. Marquez found in his mine."
Eagan studied the woman for a moment. She might have been pretty when attractively dressed and made up. He did not find it easy to believe she was a Ph.D. in ancient languages. Sitting there with her wet, stringy hair and mud-smeared face, she looked like a homeless bag lady.
"All I know for sure," said Eagan slowly, "is that you people destroyed a motorcycle, which might be stolen, and vandalized the wine cellar of the hotel."
"Forget that," pleaded Marquez. "Rescue Dr. Ambrose."
"Only when I'm sure of the facts will I send my men into the mine."
Jim Eagan had been sheriff of San Miguel County for eight years and worked in harmony with the marshals who policed the town of Telluride. Homicides were far and few between in San Miguel County.
Law-enforcement problems usually centered around auto accidents, petty theft, drunken fights, vandalism, and drug arrests, usually involving young transients who passed through Telluride during the summer season and attended various affairs such as the bluegrass and jazz festivals. Eagan was respected by the citizens of his small but beautifully scenic domain. He was a congenial man, serious in his work, but quick to laugh when having a beer at one of the local watering holes. Of medium height and weight, he often wore a facial expression that could berate and intimidate. One look was generally all it took to cower any suspect he had arrested.
"May I ask you a small favor?" said the bruised and fatigued man in the torn diver's wet suit, who looked as though he'd been dragged through the impellers of a water pump.
At first glance, he looked to Eagan to be forty-five, but he was probably a good five years younger than the tanned and craggy face suggested. The sheriff guessed him to be about six feet three inches, weight 185 pounds, give or take. His hair was black and wavy, with a few strands of gray at the temples.
The eyebrows were dark and bushy and stretched over eyes that were a vivid green. A straight and narrow nose dropped toward firm lips, with the corners turned up in a slight grin. What bothered Eagan wasn't so much the man's indifferent attitude-- he'd known many felons who displayed apathy-- but his bemused kind of detached interest. It was obvious that the man across the table was not the least bit impressed with Eagan's dominating tactics.
"Depends," Eagan answered finally, his ballpoint pen poised above a page in the notebook. "Your name?"
"Dirk Pitt."
"And what is your involvement, Mr. Pitt?"
"I'm special projects director for the National Underwater and Marine Agency. I was just passing by and thought it might be fun to prospect for gold."
Inwardly, Eagan seethed at being at a disadvantage. " We can do without the humor, Mr. Pitt."
"If I give you a phone number, will you do me the courtesy of calling it?" Pitt's tone was polite, with no trace of hostility.
"You want to speak to an attorney?"
Pitt shook his head. "No, nothing like that. I thought a simple call to confirm my position and presence might be helpful."
Eagan thought a moment, then passed his pen and notebook across the table. "Okay, let's have the number."
Pitt wrote it in the sheriff's notebook and handed it back. "It's long distance. You can call collect if you wish."
"You can pay the hotel," Eagan said, with a tight smile.
"You'll be talking to Admiral James Sandecker," said Pitt. "The number is his private line. Give him my name and explain the situation."
Eagan moved to a phone on a nearby desk, asked for an outside line, and dialed the number. After a brief pause, Eagan said, "Admiral Sandecker, this is Sheriff Jim Eagan of San Miguel County, Colorado.
I have a problem here concerning a man who claims to work for you. His name is Dirk Pitt." Then Eagan quickly outlined the situation, stating that Pitt would probably be placed under arrest and charged with second-degree criminal trespass, theft, and vandalism. From that point on, the conversation went downhill, as his face took on a dazed expression that lasted nearly ten minutes. As if talking to God, he repeated, "Yes, sir," several times. Finally, he hung up and stared at Pitt. "Your boss is a testy bastard."
Pitt laughed. "He strikes most people that way."
"You have a most impressive history."
"Did he offer to pay for damages?"
Eagan grinned. "He insisted it come out of your salary."
Curious, Pat asked, "What else did the admiral have to say?"
"He said, among other things," Eagan spoke slowly, "that if Mr. Pitt claimed the South won the Civil War, I was to believe him."
Pitt and Marquez, with Eagan and one of his deputies trailing behind, stepped through the shattered wall of the wine cellar and began jogging through the old mine tunnel. They soon passed the old stationary ore car and continued into the yawning tube.
There was no way for Pitt to judge distance in the darkened bore. His best guess was that he had left Ambrose and the captured assassin approximately three-quarters of a mile from the hotel. He held a flashlight borrowed from a deputy and switched it off every few hundred feet, peering into the darkness ahead for a sign from the dive light he'd left with Ambrose.
After covering what he believed was the correct distance, Pitt stopped and aimed the beam of the flashlight as far up the tunnel as it would penetrate. Then he flicked it off. Only pitch blackness stretched ahead.
"We're there," Pitt said to Marquez.
"That's impossible," said the miner. "Dr. Ambrose would have heard our voices echoing off the rock and seen our lights. He would have shouted or signaled us."
"Something isn't right." Pitt threw the flashlight's beam at an opening in one wall of the tunnel. "There's the portal to the bore I hid in when the bikers approached."
Eagan came up beside him. "Why are we stopping?"
"Crazy as it sounds," Pitt answered, "they've vanished."
The sheriff shone his light in Pitt's face, searching for something in his eyes. "You sure they weren't a figment of your imagination?"
"I swear to God!" Marquez muttered. "We left two dead bodies, an unconscious killer, and Dr.
Ambrose with a gun to cover him."
Pitt ignored the sheriff and dropped to his knees. He swept his light around the tunnel very slowly in a 180-degree arc, his eyes examining every inch of the ground and the ore car tracks.
Marquez started to say, "What are you--?" but Pitt threw up one hand, motioning him to silence.
In Pitt's mind, if Ambrose and the killer were gone, they had to have left some tiny indication of their presence. His original intent had been to look for the shell casings ejected from the P-10 automatic he'd used to shoot the killers. But there was no hint of a gleam from the brass casings. The back of his neck began to tingle. This was the right spot, he was certain of it. Then he sensed rather than saw an almost infinitesimal strand of black wire no more than eighteen inches away, so thin it didn't cast a shadow under his light. He trailed the beam along the wire, over the rail tracks, and up the wall to a black canvas bundle attached to one of the overhead timbers.
"Tell me, Sheriff," Pitt said in a strangely quiet voice, "have you had bomb-disposal training?"
"I teach a course in it to law enforcement," Eagan replied, eyebrows raised. "I was a demolitions expert in the Army. Why ask?"
"I do believe we were set up to enter the next world in pieces." He pointed to the wire leading from the tracks and up the timber. "Unless I miss my guess, that's an explosive booby trap."
Eagan moved until his face was inches away from the black strand. He followed it up to the canvas bundle and studied the bundle carefully. Then he turned to Pitt with a new level of respect in his eyes. "I do believe you are right, Mr. Pitt. Somebody doesn't like you."
"Include yourself, Sheriff. They must have known you and your men would have accompanied us back to Dr. Ambrose."
"Where is the professor?" wondered Marquez aloud. "Where did he and the killer go?"
"There are two possibilities," said Pitt. "The first is that the killer regained consciousness, overpowered Doc Ambrose, killed him and dumped his body down the nearest mine shaft. Then he placed the charge and escaped through another tunnel leading to the outside."
"You should write fairy tales," said Eagan.
"Then explain the booby trap."
"How do I know you didn't set it?"
"I have no motive."
"Get off it, Jim," said Marquez. "Mr. Pitt hasn't been out of my sight for the past five hours. He just saved our lives. If the blast didn't get us, the cave-in w
ould."
"We're not certain the bundle contains explosives," Eagan said stubbornly.
"Then trip the wire and see what happens." Pitt grinned. "I, for one, am not going to hang around and find out. I'm out of here." He rose to his feet and began strolling along the ore car tracks back to the hotel.
"One moment, Mr. Pitt. I'm not through with you."
Pitt paused and turned. "What are your intentions, Sheriff?"
"Check out the sack wired to the timber, and if it's an explosive device, disarm it."
Pitt took a few steps back, his face dead serious. "I wouldn't if I were you. That's not some bomb built in the backyard of a junior terrorist. I'll bet my next paycheck it was exactingly assembled by experts and will burst at the slightest touch."
Eagan looked at him. "If you have a better idea, I'd like to hear it."
"The ore car sitting a couple of hundred yards up the track," replied Pitt. "We give it a shove and let it roll through here and trip the wire and detonate the explosives."
"The roof of the tunnel will collapse," said Marquez, "blocking it forever."
Pitt shrugged. "It's not like we're destroying the tunnel to deny access to future generations. We're the first to have passed through this section of the mine since the nineteen-thirties."
"Makes sense," Eagan finally agreed. "We can't leave explosives laying about for the next underground explorers who walk through here."
Fifteen minutes later, Pitt, Eagan, Marquez, and the deputy had pushed the ore car to within fifty yards of the trip wire. The heavy iron wheels squeaked and protested for the first fifty feet, but soon loosened and began to roll smoothly over the rusty rails as the ancient grease on their axles lubricated the roller bearings. The four sweating men finally reached the crest of a slight slope that led downward.