Serpent nf-1 Read online

  "Dunno, Kurt. It's got a lot to offer. Water view. Simple decor."

  "This is what the real estate guys call a handyman's special." .

  "Comes with a cellar, too." Zavala flashed his light into a comer.

  Austin knelt to inspect a massive flagstone in the floor. It was perforated by several holes along the edge. Using their knives, they pried it open and slid the flagstone aside to reveal a stairway spiraling down. Since Zavala had been first into the building, Austin volunteered to investigate. He descended the short curving flight of stairs to a passageway that went a few yards before it was blocked by a huge slab. Austin played the beam of his flashlight over the slab.

  "You'd better get down here," he said quietly.

  Sensing the seriousness in Austin's tone, Zavala quickly joined him. Lying on the floor in front of the slab was a pile of bones. Unlike the death'shead sculpture they had seen earlier, the six skulls they counted were once covered with flesh. Zavala picked up a skull and held it at arm's length like Hamlet contemplating the remains of Yorick.

  "Sacrificial victims. From the looks of that hole in the skull, they were put but of their misery so they didn't have to starve to death."

  "The executioners were all heart," Austin said, examining the slab for a seam. "The only way to get around this thing is with a jackhammer or dynamite."

  Austin had seen enough. They climbed back to the upper chamber where Austin noticed several bleached white fragments on the floor. He picked one up only to have it crumble to powder in his hand.

  "Freshwater shellfish," he said. "This place was underwater at one time."

  Zavala brushed the dirty walls with his fingers. "You could be right. This looks like dried pond scum."

  They climbed back into the fresh air and explored the perimeter of the structure. It was built onto a stone platform that had become the catchall for material floating in the lake. Seeds, probably brought in by birds, had sprouted, and their roots kept the dirt from blowing away Looking straight down into the water at the edge of the island, it was possible to see a stone terrace. Austin kicked off his boots and slipped into the water, swam out a few strokes, and dove.

  "This thing is like the tip of an iceberg," he said when he resurfaced. "It was probably a temple on top of a very big pyramid. Can't tell how far it goes."

  "Told you we should have brought a submarine," Zavala replied as he gave Austin a hand back onto dry land. "So if what we think is true, and that building is a temple, we're at ground zero. The jaws."

  All we have to do is figure out how to get into the gullet."

  "Lovely thought. We could try blowing that slab blocking the way"

  "Yeah, we could do that, and it might even work But it's not exactly a surgical approach. Our archaeologist friends would never speak to us again. Let's think about it while we look around."

  They got back in the plane and taxied to the end of the lake, where they went ashore and made their way inland. The forest was in semidarkness except for the mottled sunlight filtering through the tree canopy. The trees discouraged undergrowth, making for an easy hike on a carpet of leaves. Austin followed a babble of water to its source and stopped where the river they had seen from the air was flanked by stone foundations. The river bed between the foundations was filled with earth and vegetation, but several streams flowed from the substantial reservoir that had built up behind the crude dam and around the old barricade toward the lake. The main course of the river turned abruptly just before it hit the foundations and angled off into the forest. Austin followed the rushing waters away from the reservoir and stopped again at a similar pair of foundations.

  "Just as I thought," he said.

  Zavala was impressed. "How'd you know these things would be here?"

  "Would you believe it if I said I was a dam genius?"

  Zavala winced. "Of course I would. Now tell me how you really knew."

  Austin picked up a branch, threw it into the river, and watched it disappear from sight in the fastmoving bubble and foam. "You remember how this river looks from the air? I think you said it had more wiggles than a belly dancer. Just before it comes into the lake, it angles off in a perfectly straight line. My first impression was that the section was too straight to be natural. Like. that temple in the center of the lake. Nothing in nature is absolutely perfect. Maybe it was a canal, I thought. You know the Chesapeake and Ohio historical park north above Washington?"

  "One of my favorite places for a cheap first date," Zavala said with a smile built of fond memories. "Muy romantico. What's that got to do with anything?"

  "Think about that temple. Sometimes it's underwater. Sometimes it isn't."

  Austin could almost hear. the gears whirring as Zavala's brilliant mechanical mind processed the information. He slapped his forehead. "Of course. The locks."

  Austin cleared a bare spot on the ground and picked up a short stick. He handed it to Zavala. "Be my guest, Professor Z."

  Zavala drew a line in the dirt. "This is the Potomac River. You can't move boats up and down, the river because of the rapids and falls, so you cut a canal around the white water. Here." He tapped the ground. "You build a system of gates and sluices to control the water level in the canal one section at a time. Let's see if I'm right." He drew an oval representing the lake. "In its normal state the river comes in here at the top,, fills the flood plain to create the lake, then flows out the bottom, keeps going until it comes to the sea."

  "Good so far, Professor."

  At some point unknown engineers put a dam here." Zavala drew a line across the top of the lake. "This blocks the water into the lake, but it's got to go somewhere or else it ends up sweeping around the gate." He drew a straight line away from the lake. "You cut this canal, and the water is diverted away from the lake to another riverbed." He looked up, triumph in his dark eyes. Now you can drain the lake."

  "And build the temple. Here." Austin drew an X in the dirt with the tip of his boot.

  Zavala picked up the narrative. After you lay the last stone of the pyramid, you close the canal sluice, open the lake gate. The lake refills in no time and hides the temple. Ergo . . ."

  "Ergo, ipso facto, and voila! Only problem is, the sluice gate is made of moving parts. In time the gate deteriorates with no public works department to maintain it. What's left of the Mayan civilization is being crushed into dust by the Spaniards. That curve is a natural catch-all for anything floating down the river. Junk builds up in front of the lake gate like a dike, the canal sluice rots open, and the river is diverted away from the lake again. The lake is fed by a few streams, but eventually the water level drops, exposing the top of the temple. Which becomes overgrown with vegetation."

  "So if we wait long enough," Zavala said, "the lake will eventually drop to where the temple is completely exposed again. Unless the water pressure from that reservoir busts through the old dam and raises the lake level."

  Austin pondered Zavala's statement and nodded. "I'll tell you the rest of my theory on the way back."

  As they walked through the forest Zavala got his revenge. "You've got to admit that's a damn nice piece of engineering."

  It was Austin's turn to ignore the pun. "I agree. It allowed them to drain the lake again if they wanted to. That leaves open the possibility that they might want to reenter the temple. The entryway on top could be a blind. Like one of the false entrances they built into the Egyptian pyramids to fool grave robbers. I wouldn't be surprised if that's why they put the skeletons there, just for stage props."

  "Some stage. Some props," Zavala said.

  "Let's call in an air drop when we get back to the plane."

  Minutes later, from the plane, Zavala radioed their wish list to the Nereus. He raised a quizzical eyebrow over one of the items Austin requested but asked no questions.

  While they waited they had something to eat, then lounged in the shade until the radio crackled with a message. "Coming in, boys. ETA ten minutes."

  Exactly on time a tur
quoise helicopter with NUMA lettering on the side came in low over the lake, hovered near the plane, and dropped a large box wrapped in heavy plastic and buoyed by airfilled floats. The helicopter crew watched the men below snag the delivery, then waved goodbye and clattered off the way they'd come. ,

  Inside the box were two sets of scuba gear and several cartons. Austin loaded the boxes in the raft and paddled back to the upper end of the lake while Zavala moved the plane .to an indentation in the shoreline. Zavala knew better than to ask Austin what he had planned. Kurt would tell him when he needed to know.

  Zavala covered the plane with a fishing net and was weaving branches into it when Austin showed up in the raft to help him finish the job. The cartons were gone. Satisfied their plane was well hidden, they piled their scuba gear into the raft and set off for the island, where they swept away traces of their previous visit. The raft was deflated and sunk in shallow water with rocks piled on top to hold it under. The water was warm, so they wore only lightweight black Lycra skins rather than the thicker neoprene wetsuits.

  Without comment Austin tucked the small pouch he was wearing around his neck into a waterproof pocket. After a quick check of their equipment, they breaststroked away from the island and, wasting no time, they let the air out of their buoyancy compensators and began to sink into the dark waters of the lake.

  47WITH SMOOTH. STEADY MOVEMENTS of their fins, they swam down and away from the temple at an angle until they were at the lake bottom, dwarfed by the imposing mass of tapering stone. The broad terraced levels spilled down the side of the pyramid like giant steps.

  "That's some hunk of rock," Austin said, his awe undiminished by the metallic tone of his underwater communicator.

  "Good thing we're not superstitious. I counted thirteen terraces."

  "Knock wood on that score," Austin said. He glanced at his depth gauge. "One hundred fourteen feet. Ready to dive the plan?"

  Longlived divers remember the mantra: plan the dive, and dive the plan. Their strategy was simple. Explore each of the four sides top to bottom. They moved counterclockwise around the pyramid. It stood entirely alone, which made Austin wonder if the pyramid had been built with a single purpose in mind. The next side was like the first, and they spent only a few minutes exploring it. They hit pay dirt on the third try.

  Where the other sides were relatively unadorned, this face was marked by a broad set of stairs running from the temple at the top down to what would have been ground level in drier days. At the foot of the stairs, standing in solitary grandeur like a doorman in front of a swank Las Vegas hotel, was a stone slab. The stela stood vertically in a foundation on the lake bottom.

  Zavala played the sharp white beam of his handheld halogen light across the dark surface. After a second he said, "Look familiar?"

  Austin eyed the carving of a feathered serpent devouring a boat. "Small world. It's a twin of the stone from the Doria. " He lifted his eyes to the stairway running up the side of the pyramid. "Reminds me of that slab that kept showing up in the movie 2001. Maybe this little old billboard is telling us something."

  With Zavala on his right and slightly behind, he drifted up the stairway like a lazy plume of smoke. The stairs were bordered with carvings, and in addition there were sculpted heads spaced every few risers. About halfway up, the huge stylized face of a serpent burst from its crown of feathers. The mouth, large enough to swallow a man, was wide open, in strike position. Thick blunt fangs about the size and shape of traffic pylons extended down from the roof of the mouth to meet a matching pair pointing up.

  "Friendlylooking fellow," said Zavala. "You don't suppose he bites?"

  "Meet the feathered serpent. Known in these parts as Kukulcan."

  "He looks like a cross between a Rottweiler and an alligator. Ask him if he knows how to get into the pyramid."

  "Maybe that's not such a dumb idea." With a few fin kicks Austin propelled himself closer to the yawning maw and probed the shadows with his light. "Say 'ah,' " he said, and headed straight in. His air tank bonked and scraped against the thick fangs, but once inside there was room to turn around. He stuck his head out of the mouth, invited Zavala in with a wave, then headed deeper into the pyramid, his light picking out footholds in the slanting floor. They swam down at an angle for about two minutes, slowly and cautiously, until the passageway ended in a chamber big enough for both of them to stand up. A set of stairs ascended into another passageway.

  "I feel like a load of dirty clothes that's just gone down a laundry chute. That was too easy," Zavala said suspiciously.

  "I was thinking the same thing. But remember, the people who built this thing knew it was going to be underwater. They probably figured that anyone trying to get in would waste time breaking through the slab just below the temple. And that even if they saw this entrance they wouldn't go into the serpent's mouth. Just the same," he added, "keep a sharp eye for booby traps."

  They rose up the stairs like ghosts in a haunted house. Austin could hear Zavala grumbling. "Wish they'd make up their mind, man. Down. Up."

  Austin sympathized with his partner's gripes. Even an experienced wreck diver can't always put aside those formless claustrophobic fears that the thousands of tons of rock overhead could come crashing down. Even worse, that they could be trapped, unable to move, doomed to die a painful suffocating death. He was glad when his head broke the water. Zavala popped up a second later. They flashed their lights around the circular pool. Zavala reached up to take his regulator from his mouth.

  Austin's hand shot out and clamped Zavala's wrist. "Wait!" he warned. "We don't know if the air is good."

  The atmosphere could be more than two thousand years old. Austin didn't know if any microorganisms, spores, or toxins could have been built up in all that time, but he wasn't willing to take the chance. He pulled himself out of the pool and removed his fins and belt, then helped Zavala do the same. They climbed the stairwell to where the floor leveled. The noise of their breath through the regulators sounded unnaturally loud out of the water.

  The long, narrow chamber had a high vaulted roof supported by arches, built in tire corbeled fashion that the Maya favored with levels of horizontally laid blocks. Austin's flashlight beam dropped from the roof and picked out an elongated head with pointed ears and flared nostrils.

  Zavala said, "Is that what I think it is?"

  A horse is a horse."

  "Of course, of course. But what the hell is Mr. Ed doing here?"

  Austin lowered his flashlight so that the beam illuminated the horse's long wooden neck "Well, I'll be . . . it's a figurehead."

  The wooden sculpture of the horse surmounted the high sweeping bow of a boat with shiny dark red sides. The prow was extended into a pointed battering ram. The builders of this boat were true artists, Austin thought as they walked alongside the hull. The craft was a double-ender, long, narrow, and flat-bottomed, sweeping up at each end in graceful curves and tight as a tick from the looks of the well-fitted overlapping planks. The mast lay lengthwise on the deck.

  Deck planks had fallen in to reveal dozens of amphorae in the hold. Scattered about were circular metal objects that may have been shields. Two long oars, their blades curled by age, leaned against the ship's backside as if waiting for the hands of long-dead steersmen. The boat sailed not on an azure sea but on a stone cradle. While most of the timbers were intact, some had rotted through so that the ship leaned at a slight angle.

  "She's a lot prettier in person," Zavala murmured.

  Austin ran his hand along the wood as if he didn't quite believe his eyes. "It's not just me, then. This is one of the ships pictured on the stelae and other carvings." .

  "What's a Phoenician boat doing in an underwater Mayan temple?"

  "Waiting to overturn every archaeological assumption ever made," Austin said. "Wait until Nina sets her eyes on this lovely lady. We'll have to give her some specs to chew over until we can get a camera in here. What do you figure for length?"

  "More than
one hundred feet, easy."

  Zavala almost bumped into one of four round pillars spaced alongside the boat. Another quartet of columns ran along the other side.

  "Here's another spec for you to chew on," he said. "Eight pillars."

  "Eight significant days in the Venus cycle," Austin replied. "Fits in."

  They were at the boat's upsweeping sterncastle. Austin had expected the chamber to end in a blank wall. Instead there was another corbeled archway and beyond it a stairway leading upward. They climbed the stairs to a much smaller chamber whose floor was taken up largely by a rectangular sunken pit. In the pit was a sarcophagus whose lid was inscribed with repetitive carvings in the feathered serpent theme. They got into the pit and tried unsuccessfully to budge the lid with their knives.

  "Maybe there's something on the ship we can use to pry it off," Austin suggested.

  They descended to the large chamber. Zavala reached up to the boat rail and with a boost from Austin pulled himself over the side and into the boat. He held on to the gunwale and took a tentative step forward, testing his weight.

  "The deck's holding, but I'll stay on the cross beam just in case." The wood creaked as he made his way across the deck. "Lots of amphorae. I Jeezus." A pause. Then an excited exclamation. "Kurt, you've got to see this!"

  Zavala came back to the side of the boat and helped Austin climb in. Through the centuries the deck had settled, and now the planking slanted down to the middle where most of the amphorae were concentrated. Austin followed Zavala on a cross beam to the middle of the deck. Although the hull rocked slightly from their weight, it remained solidly ensconced in, its stone cradle.

  Zavala bent over a big jar that had broken apart and came up with green fire sparkling in his hand. The elaborate necklace encrusted with emeralds and diamonds had come from a pile of gold and jewels lying in the artificial valley formed by the slanting planks. Austin took the necklace and decided he had never seen a piece of jewelry more beautiful. The intricate settings were painstakingly handcrafted. While Austin wondered, Zavala reached .into an intact jar and pulled out a handful of loose gems. Diamonds. Rubies. Emeralds. Zavala's mouth dropped open in astonishment. "This must be the greatest concentration of treasure in the history of the world!"