'He can't go on forever longing for a ghost,' said Giordino earnestly. 'We all have an image of a lost love who has to be put to rest someday.'
Loren had never seen the wisecracking Giordino this wistful before. 'Do you have a ghost?'
He looked at her and smiled. 'One summer, when I was nineteen, I saw a girl riding a bicycle along a sidewalk on Balboa Island in Southern California. She wore brief white shorts and a soft green blouse tied around her midriff. Her honey-blond hair was in a long ponytail. Her legs and arms were tanned mahogany. I wasn't close enough to see the color of her eyes, but I somehow knew they had to be blue. She had the look of a free spirit with a warm sense of humor. There isn't a day that goes by I don't recall her image.'
'You didn't go after her?' Loren asked in mild surprise.
'Believe it or not, I was very shy in those days. I walked the same sidewalk every day for a month, hoping to spot her again. But she never showed. She was probably vacationing with her parents and left for home soon after our paths crossed.'
'That's sad,' said Loren.
'Oh, I don't know.' Giordino laughed suddenly. 'We might have married, had ten kids and found we hated each other.'
'To me, Pitt is like your lost love. An illusion I can never quite hold on to.'
'He'll change,' Giordino said sympathetically. 'All men mellow with age.'
Loren smiled faintly and shook her head. 'Not the Dirk Pitts of this world. They're driven by an inner desire to solve mysteries and challenge the unknown. The last thing any of them wants is to grow old with the wife and kids and die in a nursing home.'
The small port of San Felipe wore a festive air. The dock was crowded with people. Everywhere there was an atmosphere of excitement as the patrol boat neared the entrance to the breakwaters forming the harbor.
Maderas turned to Pitt. 'Quite a reception.'
Pitt's eyes narrowed against the sun. 'Is it some sort of local holiday?'
'News of your remarkable journey through the earth has drawn them.'
'You've got to be kidding,' said Pitt in honest surprise.
'No, senor. Because of your discovery of the river flowing below the desert, you've become a hero to every farmer and rancher from here to Arizona who struggles to survive in a harsh wasteland.' He nodded at two vans with technicians unloading television camera equipment. 'That's why you've become big news.'
'Oh, God.' Pitt groaned. 'All I want is a soft bed to sleep in for three days.'
Pitt's mental and physical condition had improved considerably upon receiving word over the ship's radio from Admiral Sandecker that Loren, Rudi, and Al were alive, if slightly the worse for wear. Sandecker also brought him up to date on Cyrus Sarason's death at the hands of Billy Yuma and the capture of Zolar and Oxley, along with Huascar's treasure, by Gaskill and Ragsdale with the help of Henry and Micki Moore.
There was hope for the little people after all, Pitt thought stoically.
It seemed like an hour, though it was only a few minutes before the Porqueria tied up to the Alhambra for the second time that day. A large paper sign was unfolded across the upper passenger deck of the ferryboat, the letters still dripping fresh paint. It read, WELCOME BACK FROM THE DEAD.
On the auto deck a Mexican mariachi street band was lined up, playing and singing a tune that seemed familiar. Pitt leaned over the railing of the patrol boat, cocked an ear, and threw back his head in laughter. He then doubled over with pain as his merriment caused a burst of fire inside his rib cage. Giordino had pulled off the ultimate coup.
'Do you know the song they're playing?' asked Maderas, mildly alarmed at Pitt's strange display of mirth and agony.
'I recognize the tune, but not the words,' Pitt gasped through the hurt. 'They're singing in Spanish.'
'Miralos andando,' repeated Maderas, confused. 'What do they mean, `Go to the dam'?'
'Levee,' Pitt guessed. 'The opening words of the song are, `Go down to the levee.' '
As the trumpets blared, the guitars strummed, and the seven throats of the band warbled out a mariachi version of 'Waiting for the Robert E. Lee,' Loren stood among the throng that had mobbed on board the ferry and waved wildly. She could see Pitt search the crowd until he found her and happily waved back.
She saw the dressing wrapped around his head, the left arm in a sling, and the cast on one wrist. In his borrowed shorts and golf shirt he looked out of place among the uniformed crew of the Mexican navy. At first glance, he appeared amazingly fit for a man who had survived a journey through hell, purgatory, and a black abyss. But Loren knew Pitt was a master at covering up exhaustion and pain. She could see them in his eyes.
Pitt spotted Admiral Sandecker standing behind Giordino in his wheelchair. His wandering eyes also picked out Gordo Padilla with his arm around his wife, Rosa. Jesus, Gato, and the engineer, whose name he could never remember, stood nearby brandishing bottles in the air. Then the gangplank was down, and Pitt shook hands with Maderas and Hidalgo.
'Thank you, gentlemen, and thank your corpsman for me. He did a first-rate job of patching me up.'
'It is we who are in your debt, Senor Pitt,' said Hidalgo. 'My mother and father own a small ranch not far from here and will reap the benefits when wells are sunk into your river.'
'Please make me one promise,' said Pitt.
'If it's within our power,' replied Maderas.
Pitt grinned. 'Don't ever let anyone name that damned river after me.'
He turned and walked across to the auto deck of the ferry and into a sea of bodies. Loren rushed up to him, stopped, and slowly put her arms around his neck so she would not press her body against his injuries. Her lips were trembling as she kissed him.
She pulled back as the tears flowed, smiled and said, 'Welcome home, sailor.'
Then the rush was on. Newsmen and TV cameramen from both sides of the border swarmed around as Pitt greeted Sandecker and Giordino.
'I thought sure you'd bought a tombstone this time,' said Giordino, beaming like a neon sign on the Las Vegas strip.
Pitt smiled. 'If I hadn't found the Wallowing Windbag, I wouldn't be here.'
'I hope you realize,' said Sandecker, faking a frown, 'that you're getting too old for swimming around in caves.'
Pitt held up his good hand as if taking an oath. 'So help me, Admiral, if I ever so much as look at another underground cavern, shoot me in the foot.'
Then Shannon came up and planted a long kiss on his lips that had Loren fuming. When she released him, she said, 'I missed you.'
Before he could reply, Miles Rodgers and Peter Duncan were pumping his uninjured hand. 'You're one tough character,' said Rodgers.
'I busted the computer and lost your data,' Pitt said to Duncan. 'I'm genuinely sorry.'
'No problem,' Duncan replied with a broad smile. 'Now that you've proven the river runs from Satan's Sinkhole under Cerro el Capirote and shown where it resurges into the Gulf, we can trace its path with floating sonic geophysical imaging systems along with transmitting instrument packages.'
At that moment, unnoticed by most of the mob, a dilapidated Mexicali taxi smoked to a stop. A man jumped out and hurried across the dock and onto the auto deck wearing only a blanket. He put his head down and barreled his way through the mass of people until he reached Pitt.
'Rudi!' Pitt roared as he wrapped his free arm around the little man's shoulder. 'Where did you fall from?'
As if he'd timed it, Gunn's splinted fingers lost their grip on the blanket and it fell to the deck, leaving him
