Inca Gold

    "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 Sha

    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, u

    "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, Gu

    "Are you mending okay?"

    "I'll be back at my desk at NUMA before you."

    Pitt turned and hailed Rodgers. "Miles, you got your camera?"

    "No good photographer is ever without his cameras," Rodgers shouted over the noise of the crowd.

    "Take a picture of the three battered bastards of Cerro el Capirote."

    "And one battered bitch," added Loren, squeezing into the lineup.

    Rodgers got off three shots before the reporters took over.

    "Mr. Pitt!" One of the TV interviewers pushed a microphone in front of his face. "What can you tell us about the subterranean river?"

    "Only that it exists," he answered smoothly, "and that it's very wet."

    "How large would you say it is?"

    He had to think a moment as he slipped his arm around Loren and squeezed her hip. "I'd guess about two-thirds the size of the Rio Grande."

    "That big?"

    "Easily."

    "How do you feel after swimming through underground caverns for over a hundred kilometers?"

    Pitt was always irritated when a reporter asked how a mother or father felt after their house burned down with all their children inside, or how a witness felt who watched someone fall from an airplane without a parachute.

    "Feel?" stated Pitt. "Right now I feel that my bladder will burst if I don't get to a bathroom."

HOMECOMING

November 4, 1998

San Felipe, Baja California

    Two days later, after everyone gave detailed statements to the Mexican investigators, they were free to leave the country. They assembled on the dock to bid their farewells.

    Dr. Peter Duncan was the first to leave. The hydrologist slipped away early in the morning and was gone before anyone missed him. He had a busy year ahead of him as director of the Sonoran Water Project, as it was to be called. The water from the river was to prove a godsend to the drought-plagued Southwest. Water, the lifeblood of civilization, would create jobs for the people of the desert. Construction of aqueducts and pipelines would cha

    Soon to follow would be projects to mine the mineral riches Pitt had discovered on his underground odyssey and to build a tourist center beneath the earth.

    Dr. Sha

    "I hope we meet again," said Rodgers, shaking Pitt's hand.

    "Only if you promise to stay out of sacred sinkholes," Pitt said warmly.

    Rodgers laughed. "Count on it."

    Pitt looked down into Sha

    She saw in him the only man she had ever met whom she couldn't have or control. She felt an undercurrent of affection toward him she couldn't explain. Just to spite Loren again, Sha

    "So long, big guy. Don't forget me."

    Pitt nodded and said simply, "I couldn't if I tried."

    Shortly after Sha

    "Good morning, Admiral. Ready to leave, or should 1 shut down the engine?"

    "Keep it ru

    "Waiting on the ground at the Yuma Marine Corps Air Station to fly you and the others back to Washington."

    "Okay, we're set to board." Sandecker turned to Pitt. "So, you're going on sick leave?"

    "Loren and I thought we'd join a Classic Car Club of America tour through Arizona."

    "I'll expect you in one week." He turned to Loren and gave her a brief kiss on the cheek. "You're a member of Congress. Don't take any crap from him and see that he gets back in one piece, fit for work."

    Loren smiled. "Don't worry, Admiral. My constituents want me back on the job infighting shape too."

    "What about me?" said Giordino. "Don't I get time off to recuperate?"

    "You can sit behind a desk just as easily in a wheelchair." Then Sandecker smiled fiendishly. "Now, Rudi, he's a different case. I think I'll send him to Bermuda for a month."

    "Whatta guy," said Gu

    It was a charade. Pitt and Giordino were like sons to Sandecker. Nothing went on between them that wasn't marked with a high degree of respect. The admiral knew with dead certainty that as soon as they were sound and able, they'd be in his office pressuring him for an ocean project to direct.

    Two dockhands lifted Giordino into the helicopter. One seat had to be removed to accommodate his outstretched legs.

    Pitt leaned in the doorway and tweaked one of the toes that protruded from the cast. "Try not to lose this helicopter like all the others."

    "No big deal," Giordino came back. "I get one of these things every time I buy ten gallons of gas."

    Gu

    Pitt made a horrified face. "Not on your life."

    Sandecker gave Pitt a light hug. "You rest up and take it easy," he said softly so the others couldn't hear above the beat of the rotor blades. "I'll see you when I see you."