apparatus.'
'Apparatus?' Pitt squeezed her around the waist. 'In light of modern diesel turbines, walking beam engines seem antiquated. But when you look back on the engineering and manufacturing techniques that were state-of-the-art during their era, they are monuments to the genius of our forefathers.'
She passed him the little bottle of tequila and the glass of ice. 'Enough of this masculine crap about smelly old engines. Swill this down. Dinner will be ready in ten minutes.'
'You have no respect for the finer things in life,' said Pitt, nuzzling her hand.
'Make your choice. The engines or me?'
He looked up at the piston rod as it pumped the walking beam up and down. 'I can't deny having an obsession with the stroke of an engine.' He smiled slyly. 'But I freely confess there's a lot to be said for stroking something that's soft and cuddly.'
'Now there's a comforting thought for all the women of the world.'
Jesus dropped down the ladder from the car deck and said something in Spanish to Padilla. He listened, nodded, and looked at Pitt. 'Jesus says the lights of a plane have been circling the ferry for the past half hour.'
Pitt stared for a moment at the giant crank that turned the paddlewheels. Then he gave Loren a squeeze and said briefly, 'A good sign.'
'A sign of what?' she asked curiously.
'The guys on the other side,' he said in a cheery voice. 'They've failed and now they hope to follow us to the mother lode. That gives an advantage to our team.'
After a hearty dinner on one of the thirty tables in the yawning, unobstructed passengers' section of the ferry, the table was cleared and Pitt spread out a nautical chart and two geological land survey maps. Pitt spoke to them distinctly and precisely, laying out his thoughts so clearly they might have been their own.
'The landscape is not the same. There have been great changes in the past almost five hundred years.' He paused and pieced together the three maps, depicting an uninterrupted view of the desert terrain from the upper shore of the Gulf north to the Coachella Valley of California.
'Thousands of years ago the Sea of Cortez used to stretch over the present-day Colorado Desert and Imperial Valley above the Salton Sea. Through the centuries, the Colorado River flooded and carried enormous amounts of silt into the sea, eventually forming a delta and diking in the northern area of the sea. This buildup of silt left behind a large body of water that was later known as Lake Cahuilla, named, I believe, after the Indians who lived on its banks. As you travel around the foothills that rim the basin, you can still see the ancient waterline and find seashells scattered throughout the desert.
'When did it dry up?' asked Shannon.
'Between 1100 and 1200 A.D.'
'Then where did the Salton Sea come from?'
'In an attempt to irrigate the desert, a canal was built to carry water from the Colorado River. In 1905, after unseasonably heavy rains and much silting, the river burst the banks of the canal and water poured into the lowest part of the desert's basin. A desperate dam operation stopped the flow, but not before enough water had flowed through to form the Salton Sea, with a surface eighty meters below sea level. Actually, it's a large lake that will eventually go the way of Lake Cahuilla, despite irrigation drainage that has temporarily stabilized its present size.'
Gunn produced a bottle of Mexican brandy. 'A short intermission for spirits to rejuvenate the bloodstream.' Lacking the proper snifter goblets, he poured the brandy into plastic cups. Then he raised his. 'A toast to success.'
'Hear, hear,' said Giordino. 'Amazing how a good meal and a little brandy changes one's attitude.'
'We're all hoping Dirk has discovered a new solution,' said Loren.
'Interesting to see if he makes sense.' Shannon made an impatient gesture. 'Let's hear where all this is going.'
Pitt said nothing but leaned over the maps and drew a circular line through the desert with a red felt-tip pen. 'This is approximately where the Gulf extended in the late fourteen hundreds, before the river's silt buildup worked south.'
'Less than a kilometer from the present border between the United States and Mexico,' observed Rodgers.
'An area now mostly covered by wetlands and mudflats known as the Laguna Salada.'
'How does this swamp fit into the picture?' asked Gunn.
Pitt's face glowed like a corporate executive officer about to announce a fat dividend to his stockholders. 'The island where the Incas and the Chachapoyas buried Huascar's golden chain is no longer an island.'
Then he sat down and sipped his brandy, allowing the revelation to penetrate and blossom.
As if responding to a drill sergeant's command, everyone leaned over the charts and studied the markings Pitt had made indicating the ancient shoreline. Shannon pointed to a small snake Pitt had drawn that coiled around a high rock outcropping halfway between the marsh and the foothills of the Las Tinajas Mountains.
'What does the snake signify?'
'A kind of `X marks the spot,' ' answered Pitt.
Gunn closely examined the geological survey map. 'You've designated a small mountain that, according to the contour elevations, tops out at slightly less than five hundred meters.'
'Or about sixteen hundred feet,' Giordino tallied.
'What is it called?' Loren wondered.
'Cerro el Capirote,' Pitt answered. 'Capirote in English means a tall, pointed ceremonial hat, or what we used to call a dunce cap.'
'So you think this high pinnacle in the middle of nowhere is our treasure site?' Rodgers asked Pitt.
'If you study the maps closely, you'll find several other small mounts with sharp summits rising from the desert floor beside the swamp. Any one of them matches the general description. But I'm laying my money on Cerro el Capirote.'
'What brings you to such an uncompromising decision?' Shannon queried.
'I put myself in the Incas' shoes, or sandals as it were, and selected the best spot to hide what was at the time the world's greatest treasure. If I were General Naymlap, I'd look for the most imposing island at the upper end of a sea as far away from the hated Spanish conquerors as I could find. Cerro el Capirote was about as far as he could go in the early fifteen hundreds, and its height makes it the most imposing.'
The mood on the passenger deck of the ferry was definitely on the upswing. New hope had been injected into a project that had come within a hair of being written off as a failure. Pitt's unshakable confidence had infected everyone. Even Shannon was belting down the brandy and grinning like a Dodge City saloon hostess. It was as if all doubt had been thrown overboard. Suddenly, they all took finding the demon perched on the peak of Cerro el Capirote for granted.
If they had the slightest hint that Pitt had reservations, the party would have died a quick death. He felt secure in his conclusions, but he was too pragmatic not to harbor a few small doubts.
And then there was the dark side of the coin. He and Giordino had not mentioned that they had identified Doc Miller's killer as one of the other searchers. They both quietly realized that the Zolars or the Solpemachaco, whatever devious name they went under in this part of the world, were not aware that the treasure was in Pitt's sights.
Pitt began to picture Tupac Amaru in his mind, the cold, lifeless eyes, and he knew the hunt was about to become ugly and downright dirty.
They sailed the Alhambra north of Punta San Felipe and heaved to when her paddlewheels churned up a wake of red silt. A few kilometers ahead, the mouth of the Colorado River, wide and shallow, gaped on the horizon. Spread on either side of the murky, salt-laden water were barren mudflats, totally devoid of vegetation. Few planets in the universe could have looked as wretched and dead.
Pitt gazed at the grim landscape through the windscreen of the helicopter as he adjusted his safety harness. Shannon was strapped in the copilot's seat and Giordino and Rodgers sat in the rear passenger section of the cabin. He waved at Gunn, who replied with a V for victory sign, and Loren, who appropriately blew him a kiss.
His hands danced over the cyclic and collective pitch sticks as the rotors turned, gathering speed until the
