'Almost as bad,' said Duncan, shuddering at the ghastly sight. 'The rapids must have beat him against every rock between here and Cerro el Capirote.'
'Couldn't happen to a nicer guy,' Giordino muttered acidly.
'Somewhere between the treasure cavern and the Gulf,' said Duncan, 'the river must erupt into a rampage.'
'No sign of another body?' Sandecker asked Hidalgo.
'Nothing, senor. This is the only one we found, but we have orders to continue the search for the second man.'
Sandecker turned away from Amaru. 'If Dirk hasn't been cast out into the Gulf by now, he must still be underground.'
'Maybe he was washed up on a beach or a sandbank,' offered Shannon hopefully. 'He might still be alive.'
'Can't you launch an expedition down the subterranean river to find him?' Rodgers asked the admiral.
Sandecker shook his head slowly. 'I won't send a team of men to certain death.'
'The admiral is right,' said Giordino. 'There could be a dozen cascades like the one Pitt and I went over. Even with a Hovercraft like the Wallowing Windbag, it's extremely doubtful anyone can gain safe passage through a hundred kilometers of water peppered with rapids and rocks.'
'If that isn't enough,' added Duncan, 'there's the submerged caverns to get through before surfacing in the Gulf. Without an ample air supply, drowning would be inescapable.'
How far do you think he might drift?' Sandecker asked him.
'From the treasure chamber?'
'Yes.'
Duncan thought a moment. 'Pitt might have a chance if he managed to reach a dry shore within five hundred meters. We could tie a man on a guideline and safely send him downstream that far, and then pull them back against the current.'
'And if no sign of Pitt is found before the guideline runs out?' asked Giordino.
Duncan shrugged solemnly. 'Then if his body doesn't surface in the Gulf, we'll never find him.'
'Is there any hope for Dirk?' Loren pleaded. 'Any hope at all?'
Duncan looked from Giordino to Sandecker before answering. All eyes reflected abject hopelessness and their faces were etched with despair. He turned back to Loren and said gently, 'I can't lie to you, Miss Smith.' The words appeared to cause him great discomfort. 'Dirk's chances are as good as any badly injured man's of reaching Lake Mead outside of Las Vegas after being cast adrift in the Colorado River at the entrance to the Grand Canyon.'
The words came like a physical blow to Loren. She began to sway on her feet. Giordino reached out and grabbed her arm. It seemed that her heart stopped, and she whispered, 'To me, Dirk Pitt will never die.'
'The fish are a little shy today,' said Joe Hagen to his wife, Claire.
She was lying on her belly on the roof of the boat's main cabin, barely wearing a purple bikini with the halter untied, reading a magazine. She pushed her sunglasses on top of her head and laughed. 'You couldn't catch a fish if it jumped up and landed in the boat.'
He laughed. 'Just wait and see.'
'The only fish you'll find this far north in the Gulf is shrimp,' she nagged.
The Hagens were in their early sixties and in reasonably good shape. As with most women her age, Claire's bottom had spread and her waist carried a little flab, but her face was fairly free of wrinkles and her breasts were still large and firm. Joe was a big man who fought a losing battle with a paunch that had grown into a well- rounded stomach. Together they ran a family auto dealership in Anaheim specializing in clean, low-mileage used cars.
After Joe bought a 15-meter (50-foot) oceangoing ketch, and named it The First Attempt, out of Newport Beach, California, they began leaving the management of their business to their two sons. They liked to sail down the coast and around Cabo San Lucas into the Sea of Cortez, spending the fall months cruising back and forth between picturesque ports nestled on the shores.
This was the first time they had sailed this far north. As he lazily trolled for whatever fish took a fancy to his bait, Joe kept half an eye on the fathometer as he idled along on the engine with the sails furled. The tides at this end of the Gulf could vary as much as 7 meters (23 feet) and he didn't want to run on an uncharted sandbar.
He relaxed as the stylus showed a depression under the keel to be over 50 meters (164 feet) deep. A puzzling feature, he thought. The seafloor on the north end of the Gulf was uniformly shallow, seldom going below 10 meters at high tide. The bottom was usually a mixture of silt and sand. The fathometer read the underwater depression as uneven hard rock.
'Aha, they laughed at all the great geniuses,' said Joe as he felt a tug on his trolling line. He reeled it in and discovered a California corbina about the length of his arm on the hook.
Claire shaded her eyes with one hand. 'He's too pretty to keep. Throw the poor thing back.'
'That's odd.'
'What's odd?'
'All the other corbinas I've ever caught had dark spots on a white body. This sucker is colored like a fluorescent canary.'
She adjusted her halter and came astern to have a closer look at his catch.
'Now this is really weird,' said Joe, holding up one hand and displaying palm and fingers that were stained a bright yellow. 'If I weren't a sane man, I'd say somebody dyed this fish.'
'He sparkles under the sun as if his scales were spangles,' said Claire.
Joe peered over the side of the boat. 'The water in this one particular area looks like it was squeezed out of a lemon.'
'Could be a good fishing hole.'
'You may be right, old girl.' Joe moved past her to the bow and threw out the anchor. 'This looks as good a place as any to spend the afternoon angling for a big one.'
There was no rest for the weary. Pitt went over four more cataracts. Providentially, none had a steep, yawning drop like the one that almost killed him and Giordino. The steepest drop he encountered was 2 meters (6.5 feet). The partially deflated Wallowing Windbag bravely plunged over the sharp ledge and successfully ran an obstacle course through rocks hiding under roaring sheets of froth and spray before continuing her voyage to oblivion.
It was the boiling stretches of rapids that proved brutal. Only after they extracted their toll in battering torment could Pitt relax for a short time in the forgiving, unobstructed stretches of calm water that followed. The bruising punishment made his wounds feel as if they were being stabbed by little men with pitchforks. But the pain served a worthy purpose by sharpening his senses. He cursed the river, certain it was saving the worst for last before smashing his desperate gamble to escape.
The paddle was torn from his hand, but it proved a small loss. With 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of equipment in a collapsing boat in addition to him, it was useless to attempt a sharp course change to dodge rocks that loomed up in the dark, especially while trying to paddle with one arm. He was too weak to do little more than feebly grasp the support straps attached to the interior of the hull and let the current take him where it might.
Two more float cells were ruptured after colliding with sharp rocks that sliced through the thin skin of the hull, and Pitt found himself lying half-covered with water in what had become little more than a collapsed air bag. Surprisingly, he kept a death grip on the flashlight with his right hand. But he had completely drained three of the air tanks and most of the fourth while dragging the sagging little vessel through several fully submerged galleries before reaching open caverns on the other side and reinflating the remaining float cells.
Pitt never suffered from claustrophobia but it would have come easy for most people in the black never- ending void. He avoided any thoughts of panic by singing and talking to himself during his wild ride through the unfriendly water. He shone the light on his hands and feet. They were shriveled like prunes after the long hours of immersion.
'With all this water, dehydration is the least of my problems,' he muttered to the dank, uncaring
