Inca Gold

    "Yell if you want me to move you around," said Giordino over the cockpit radio.

    "Maintain your position," Pitt directed. "Shifting around might snag the descent cable and leave me hanging up here till I'm an old man."

    Pitt entered a thicker maze of branches and quickly managed to cut a tu

    "Can you see the ground?" asked Gu

    "Not yet. I still have to move through a small tree that looks like some sort of palm with wild peaches growing on it. After that, I have to dodge a snarl of hanging vines."

    "I believe they're called lianas."

    "Botany wasn't one of my better subjects."

    "You could grab one and play Tarzan," said Gu

    "Only if I saw Jane--"

    Gu

    When Pitt answered, his voice was barely louder than a whisper. "I almost grabbed what I took to be a thick vine. But it was a snake the size of a drainpipe with a mouth like an alligator."

    "What color?"

    "Black with yellowish brown spots."

    "A boa constrictor," explained Gu

    "Like hell," Pitt snorted. "If he so much as looks cross-eyed at me, he meets Madame LaFarge.

    "Who?"

    "My machete."

    "What else do you see?"

    "Several magnificent butterflies, a number of insects that look like they belong on an alien planet, and a parrot too shy to ask for a cracker. You wouldn't believe the size of the flowers growing out of nooks in the trees. There are violets the size of my head."

    Conversation dropped off as Pitt chopped his way through a low tree with dense branches. He was sweating like a prizefighter in the last round of a championship match, and his clothes were soaked through from the heavy moisture clinging to the leaves of the trees. As he raised the machete, his arm brushed a vine armored with thorns that shredded his shirt sleeve and sliced his forearm as neatly as claws on a cat. Luckily, the cuts were not deep or painful, and he disregarded them.

    "Stop the winch," he said as he felt firm ground beneath his feet. "I'm down."

    "Any sign of the galleon?" Gu

    Pitt did not immediately answer. He tucked the machete under his arm and turned a complete circle, unclipping the safety harness as he surveyed his surroundings. It was like being at the bottom of a leafy ocean. There was scarcely any light, and what little was available had the same eerie quality a diver would experience at 60 meters (196 feet) beneath the surface of the sea. The dense vegetation blotted out most of the color spectrum from the little sunlight that reached him, leaving only green and blue mixed with gray.

    He was pleasantly surprised to find the rain forest was not impassable at ground level. Except for a soft carpet of decomposing leaves and twigs, the floor beneath the canopy of trees was comparatively free of growth, with none of the heaps of moldering vegetation he had expected. Now that he was standing in the sunless depths he could easily understand why plant life that grew close to the ground was scarce.

    "I see nothing that resembles the hull of a ship," he said. "No ribs, no beams, no keel."

    "A bust," said Gu

    "No," Pitt replied, striving to keep his voice calm, "I can't say that."

    "What are you telling us?"

    "Only that the fungi, insects, and bacteria that call this place home have made a meal out of every organic component of the ship. Not too surprising when you figure that they had four hundred years to devour it down to the keel."

    Gu

    "Oh, my God!" he yelped. "We found it. You're actually standing on the wreck of the galleon."

    "Dead center."

    "You say all sign of the hull is gone?" Giordino cut in.

    "All that remains is covered by moss and humus, but I think I can make out some ceramic pots, a few scattered ca

    "Shall we hang around?" asked Giordino.

    "No, get your tails to Manta and refuel. I'll poke around for the jade box until you get back."

    "Can we drop you anything?"

    "I shouldn't need anything but the machete."

    "You still have the smoke canisters?" Giordino asked.

    "Two of them clipped to my belt."

    "Set one off soon as you hear us return."

    "Never fear," Pitt said blithely. "I'm not about to try walking out of here."

    "See you in two hours," said Gu

    "Try to be on time."

    In a different circumstance, at a different time, Pitt might have experienced a fit of depression as the sound of the McDo

    The shaft and one fluke of an anchor that protruded from the humus beneath the more recently fallen leaves indicated the location of the bow. He did not think that sailing master Thomas Cuttill would store the jade box in the cargo hold. The fact that Drake intended it as a gift to the queen suggested that he kept it near him, probably in the great cabin in the stern occupied by the captain of the ship.

    As Pitt walked through the debris field, clearing away small areas with the machete, he found relics of the crew but no bones. Most of them had been swept off the ship by the tidal wave. He spied pairs of moldy leather shoes, hardened bone handles on knives whose blades had rusted away, ceramic eating bowls, and a still blackened iron cooking pot. Dread grew inside him as he realized the meagerness of the debris. He began to fear the wreck might have already been found and looted. He removed a plastic packet from inside his shirt, opened one end and pulled out the illustrations and cutaway plans of a standard treasure galleon Perlmutter had faxed. Using the plans as a guide, he carefully measured off his steps until he estimated he was in the area of the hold where the valuable cargo would have been stored.