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"I'd feel a whole lot better if they were using professional equipment instead of old dive gear borrowed from local Customs agents."
"Every minute counts if we're to save Loren and Rudi. By doing an exploratory survey now to see if my plan has the slightest chance of succeeding, we save six hours. The same time it takes for our state-of-the-art equipment to arrive in Calexico from Washington."
"Sheer madness to attempt such a dangerous operation," said Sandecker in a tired voice.
"Do we have an alternative?"
"None that comes to mind."
"Then we must give it a try," said Pitt firmly.
"You don't even know yet if you have the sl
ightest prospect of--"
"They've signaled," Pitt interrupted the admiral as the line tautened in his hands. "They're on their way up."
Together, Pitt pulling in on the line, Sandecker holding the reel between his knees and turning the crank, they began hauling in the two divers who were somewhere deep inside the sinkhole on the other end of the 200-meter 460(656-foot) line. A long fifteen minutes later, breathing heavily, they brought in the red knot that signified the third fifty-meter mark.
"Only fifty meters to go," Sandecker commented heavily. He pulled on the reel as he cranked, trying to ease the strain on Pitt who did the major share of the work. The admiral was a health enthusiast, jogged several miles a day, and occasionally worked out in the NUMA headquarters health spa, but the exertion of pulling dead weight without a time-out pushed his heart rate close to the red line. "I see them," he panted thankfully.
Gratefully, Pitt let go of the line and sagged to a sitting position to catch his breath. "They can ascend on their own from there."
Giordino was the first of the two divers to surface. He removed his twin air tanks and hoisted them to Sandecker. Then he offered a hand to Pitt who leaned back and heaved him out of the water. The next man up was Dr. Peter Duncan, a U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist, who had arrived in Calexico by chartered jet only an hour after Sandecker contacted him in San Diego. At first he thought the admiral was joking about an underground river, but curiosity overcame his skepticism and he dropped everything to join in the exploratory dive. He spit out the mouthpiece to his air regulator.
"I never envisioned a water source that extensive," he said between deep breaths.
"You found an access to the river," Pitt stated., not asked, happily.
"The sinkhole drops about sixty meters before it meets a horizontal feeding stream that runs a hundred and twenty meters through a series of narrow fissures to the river," explained Giordino.
Can we gain passage for the float equipment?" Pitt queried.
"It gets a little tight in places, but I think we can squeeze it through."
"The water temperature?"
"A cool but bearable twenty degrees Celsius, about sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit."
Duncan pulled off his hood, revealing the great bush of a red beard. He made no effort to climb from the pool. He rested his arms on the bank and babbled in excitement. "I didn't believe it when you described a wide river with a current of nine knots under the Sonoran Desert. Now that I've seen it with my own eyes, I still don't believe it. I'd guess anywhere from ten to fifteen million acre-feet of water a year is flowing down there."
"Do you think it's the same underground stream that flows under Cerro el Capirote?" asked Sandecker.
"No doubt about it," answered Duncan. "Now that I've seen the river exists with my own eyes, I'd be willing to gamble it's the same stream that Leigh Hunt claimed runs beneath the Castle Dome Mountains."
"So Hunt's canyon of gold probably exists." Pitt smiled.
"You know about that legend?"
"No legend now."
A delighted look crossed Duncan's face. "No, I guess not, I'm happy to say."
"Good thing we were tied to a fixed guideline," said Giordino.
Duncan nodded. "I couldn't agree more. Without it, we would have been swept away by the river when we emerged from the feeder stream."
"And joined those two divers who ended up in the Gulf."
