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He slowly shook his head. "Call it a complicated conspiracy or a Machiavellian plot-- something is going down that goes far beyond mere murder. I don't have to possess psychic gifts to know the inscriptions and the black skull inside the chamber have far deeper consequences than we can possibly imagine."
When Sheriff Eagan arrived and began questioning Giordino, Pitt walked outside into the cold night and looked up at the great carpet in the black sky that was the Milky Way. The Marquez house was at nearly ten thousand feet of altitude, and here the stars were magnified into a sparkling sea of crystal.
He looked beyond the skies and cursed the night, cursed his helplessness, cursed the unknown murderers, cursed himself for being lost in a maelstrom of bewilderment. Who were the madmen and their crazy New Destiny? Answers were lost in the night. He couldn't see the obvious, and the inevitable became remote and distant.
He knew for certain that someone was going to pay, and pay big time.
He began to feel better. Beyond his anger lay an icy confidence, and beyond that a heightened lucidity.
A thought was already forming in his mind, racing and developing until he saw clearly what he must do.
First thing in the morning, he was going back into the mines and bring out the black obsidian skull.
Unable to use their original escape route because of the booby trap explosive that had collapsed the roof of the tunnel, a team consisting of Pitt, Giordino, Eagan, Marquez, and two deputies traveled the course Pitt had taken from the Buccaneer Mine twenty-four hours earlier. Relying on Pitt's directional computer for guidance, the men quickly reached a flooded shaft that dropped to the tunnels below and led into the Paradise Mine.
Pitt stood on the edge of the shaft and stared into the black, ominous water, wondering if this was such a good idea. The flooding had risen two mine levels higher than the day before. During the night the pressure from far below had slowly diminished, until the water finally found its level.
Sheriff Eagan thought he was crazy. Pat O'Connell thought he was crazy, as did Luis and Lisa Marquez. Only Giordino refrained from calling Pitt crazy, and that was because he insisted on going along as backup in case Pitt ran into trouble.
The dive equipment was basically the same as that Pitt used before, except that now he intended to wear a dry suit. The wet suit had proven practical for movement out of water and protected him from cold during the hike through the mines, but the dry suit was more efficient in insulating the body against the frigid thermal temperatures of the underground water. For the hike back to the shaft, however, he wore warm, comfortable clothing, planning to change into the dry suit only when it came time to go under.
Luis Marquez had accompanied the expedition after recruiting three of his neighboring miner friends to help carry the dive equipment, which included rope ladders to ease the trip through vertical shafts. Sheriff Eagan firmly believed his services would be required to direct a rescue operation that he saw as inevitable.
Pitt and Giordino slipped out of their street clothes and, for added thermal protection, pulled on nylon-and-polyester inner suits that were shaped like long john underwear. Then they climbed into Viking vulcanized-rubber dry suits with attached hood, gloves, and traction-soled boots. Once they were suited up, their equipment and gauges checked, Pitt glanced into Giordino's face. The little Italian looked as unruffled and tranquil as if he were about to dive into an eight-foot-deep swimming pool. "I'll guide us with the directional computer and leave it to you to focus on the decompression tables."
Giordino held up a decompression computer strapped to his left arm. "Figuring an approximate dive time of thirty minutes in water one hundred and ten feet deep, at an altitude of ten thousand feet above sea level, took a bit of prodigious calculation for our decompression stops. But I think I can get you back to this rock garden without narcosis, an embolism, or the bends."
"I'll be eternally grateful."
Pitt pulled on a Mark II full face mask with a built-in underwater communications system. "Do you read me?" he asked Giordino.
"Like you were inside my head."
They had hauled ten air tanks into the mine. For the dive, they each carried twin tanks strapped to their backpacks, with a reserve tank clamped in between for a total of six. The remaining four were to be lowered by Marquez and his friends at predetermined depths as reckoned by Giordino's computer for the decompression stops. They carried no weapons except their dive knives.
"I guess we might as well go," said Pitt.
"After you," Giordino replied.
Pitt switched on his dive light and beamed it onto the smooth surface of the water. He kicked off from the edge and dropped five feet through the air, crashing through the liquid void in an explosion of bubbles. A second explosion quickly followed, as Giordino emerged out of the gloom beside him. He made a motion with his hand downward, doubled over, and kicked his fins, heading into the depths of the mine.
They swam down, down, their dive lights cutting the black water, revealing nothing but cold, hard rock walls. They went slowly, equalizing the increasing water pressure in their ears the deeper they dove. If they hadn't known they were diving down a vertical shaft, they'd have sworn they were swimming inside a horizontal drainpipe.
At last, the floor of the gallery at the bottom of the shaft appeared, the ore cart track rising to meet them, rails mute and cold
under their thick film of rust. The turbidity created by the rushing surge after the explosion the day before had dissipated and the water was calm and clear, visibility reaching at least fifty feet. Pitt checked his depth gauge-- the needle stood at 186 feet-- and he waited until Giordino leveled out slightly ahead of him.
"How far from here?" asked Giordino.
"Ninety to a hundred yards," Pitt answered, pointing. "Just around that bend in the tunnel."
He pumped his fins and darted into the tunnel, his light sweeping back and forth through the timbers.
They rounded the bend, moving above the curve of the ore cart tracks. Suddenly, Pitt thrust out his arm and abruptly stopped.
"Switch off your light!" he ordered Giordino.
