Serpent (67 page)

Without comment Austin tucked the small pouch he was wearing around his neck into a waterproof pocket. After a quick check of their equipment, they breaststroked away from the island and, wasting no time, they let the air out of their buoyancy compensators and began to sink into the dark waters of the lake.

47WITH SMOOTH. STEADY MOVEMENTS of their fins, they swam down and away from the temple at an angle until they were at the lake bottom, dwarfed by the imposing mass of tapering stone. The broad terraced levels spilled down the side of the pyramid like giant steps.

"That's some hunk of rock," Austin said, his awe undiminished by the metallic tone of his underwater communicator.

"Good thing we're not superstitious. I counted thirteen terraces."

"Knock wood on that score," Austin said. He glanced at his depth gauge. "One hundred fourteen feet. Ready to dive the plan?"

Longlived divers remember the mantra: plan the dive, and dive the plan. Their strategy was simple. Explore each of the four sides top to bottom. They moved counterclockwise around the pyramid. It stood entirely alone, which made Austin wonder if the pyramid had been built with a single purpose in mind. The next side was like the first, and they spent only a few minutes exploring it. They hit pay dirt on the third try.

Where the other sides were relatively unadorned, this face was marked by a broad set of stairs running from the temple at the top down to what would have been ground level in drier days. At the foot of the stairs, standing in solitary grandeur like a doorman in front of a swank Las Vegas hotel, was a stone slab. The stela stood vertically in a foundation on the lake bottom.

Zavala played the sharp white beam of his handheld halogen light across the dark surface. After a second he said, "Look familiar?"

Austin eyed the carving of a feathered serpent devouring a boat. "Small world. It's a twin of the stone from the Doria. " He lifted his eyes to the stairway running up the side of the pyramid. "Reminds me of that slab that kept showing up in the movie 2001. Maybe this little old billboard is telling us something."

With Zavala on his right and slightly behind, he drifted up the stairway like a lazy plume of smoke. The stairs were bordered with carvings, and in addition there were sculpted heads spaced every few risers. About halfway up, the huge stylized face of a serpent burst from its crown of feathers. The mouth, large enough to swallow a man, was wide open, in strike position. Thick blunt fangs about the size and shape of traffic pylons extended down from the roof of the mouth to meet a matching pair pointing up.

"Friendlylooking fellow," said Zavala. "You don't suppose he bites?"

"Meet the feathered serpent. Known in these parts as Kukulcan."

"He looks like a cross between a Rottweiler and an alligator. Ask him if he knows how to get into the pyramid."

"Maybe that's not such a dumb idea." With a few fin kicks Austin propelled himself closer to the yawning maw and probed the shadows with his light. "Say 'ah,' " he said, and headed straight in. His air tank bonked and scraped against the thick fangs, but once inside there was room to turn around. He stuck his head out of the mouth, invited Zavala in with a wave, then headed deeper into the pyramid, his light picking out footholds in the slanting floor. They swam down at an angle for about two minutes, slowly and cautiously, until the passageway ended in a chamber big enough for both of them to stand up. A set of stairs ascended into another passageway.

"I feel like a load of dirty clothes that's just gone down a laundry chute. That was too easy," Zavala said suspiciously.

"I was thinking the same thing. But remember, the people who built this thing knew it was going to be underwater. They probably figured that anyone trying to get in would waste time breaking through the slab just below the temple. And that even if they saw this entrance they wouldn't go into the serpent's mouth. Just the same," he added, "keep a sharp eye for booby traps."

They rose up the stairs like ghosts in a haunted house. Austin could hear Zavala grumbling. "Wish they'd make up their mind, man. Down. Up."

Austin sympathized with his partner's gripes. Even an experienced wreck diver can't always put aside those formless claustrophobic fears that the thousands of tons of rock overhead could come crashing down. Even worse, that they could be trapped, unable to move, doomed to die a painful suffocating death. He was glad when his head broke the water. Zavala popped up a second later. They flashed their lights around the circular pool. Zavala reached up to take his regulator from his mouth.

Austin's hand shot out and clamped Zavala's wrist. "Wait!" he warned. "We don't know if the air is good."

The atmosphere could be more than two thousand years old. Austin didn't know if any microorganisms, spores, or toxins could have been built up in all that time, but he wasn't willing to take the chance. He pulled himself out of the pool and removed his fins and belt, then helped Zavala do the same. They climbed the stairwell to where the floor leveled. The noise of their breath through the regulators sounded unnaturally loud out of the water.

The long, narrow chamber had a high vaulted roof supported by arches, built in tire corbeled fashion that the Maya favored with levels of horizontally laid blocks. Austin's flashlight beam dropped from the roof and picked out an elongated head with pointed ears and flared nostrils.

Zavala said, "Is that what I think it is?"

A horse is a horse."

"Of course, of course. But what the hell is Mr. Ed doing here?"

Austin lowered his flashlight so that the beam illuminated the horse's long wooden neck "Well, I'll be . . . it's a figurehead."

The wooden sculpture of the horse surmounted the high sweeping bow of a boat with shiny dark red sides. The prow was extended into a pointed battering ram. The builders of this boat were true artists, Austin thought as they walked alongside the hull. The craft was a double-ender, long, narrow, and flat-bottomed, sweeping up at each end in graceful curves and tight as a tick from the looks of the well-fitted overlapping planks. The mast lay lengthwise on the deck.

Deck planks had fallen in to reveal dozens of amphorae in the hold. Scattered about were circular metal objects that may have been shields. Two long oars, their blades curled by age, leaned against the ship's backside as if waiting for the hands of long-dead steersmen. The boat sailed not on an azure sea but on a stone cradle. While most of the timbers were intact, some had rotted through so that the ship leaned at a slight angle.

"She's a lot prettier in person," Zavala murmured.

Austin ran his hand along the wood as if he didn't quite believe his eyes. "It's not just me, then. This is one of the ships pictured on the stelae and other carvings." .

"What's a Phoenician boat doing in an underwater Mayan temple?"

"Waiting to overturn every archaeological assumption ever made," Austin said. "Wait until Nina sets her eyes on this lovely lady. We'll have to give her some specs to chew over until we can get a camera in here. What do you figure for length?"

"More than one hundred feet, easy."

Zavala almost bumped into one of four round pillars spaced alongside the boat. Another quartet of columns ran along the other side.

"Here's another spec for you to chew on," he said. "Eight pillars."

"Eight significant days in the Venus cycle," Austin replied. "Fits in."

They were at the boat's upsweeping sterncastle. Austin had expected the chamber to end in a blank wall. Instead there was another corbeled archway and beyond it a stairway leading upward. They climbed the stairs to a much smaller chamber whose floor was taken up largely by a rectangular sunken pit. In the pit was a sarcophagus whose lid was inscribed with repetitive carvings in the feathered serpent theme. They got into the pit and tried unsuccessfully to budge the lid with their knives.

"Maybe there's something on the ship we can use to pry it off," Austin suggested.

They descended to the large chamber. Zavala reached up to the boat rail and with a boost from Austin pulled himself over the side and into the boat. He held on to the gunwale and took a tentative step forward, testing his weight.

"The deck's holding, but I'll stay on the cross beam just in case." The wood creaked as he made his way across the deck. "Lots of amphorae. I Jeezus." A pause. Then an excited exclamation. "Kurt, you've got to see this!"

Zavala came back to the side of the boat and helped Austin climb in. Through the centuries the deck had settled, and now the planking slanted down to the middle where most of the amphorae were concentrated. Austin followed Zavala on a cross beam to the middle of the deck. Although the hull rocked slightly from their weight, it remained solidly ensconced in, its stone cradle.

Zavala bent over a big jar that had broken apart and came up with green fire sparkling in his hand. The elaborate necklace encrusted with emeralds and diamonds had come from a pile of gold and jewels lying in the artificial valley formed by the slanting planks. Austin took the necklace and decided he had never seen a piece of jewelry more beautiful. The intricate settings were painstakingly handcrafted. While Austin wondered, Zavala reached .into an intact jar and pulled out a handful of loose gems. Diamonds. Rubies. Emeralds. Zavala's mouth dropped open in astonishment. "This must be the greatest concentration of treasure in the history of the world!"

Austin was squatting by an amphora that had split open. "It makes the British crown jewels look like play beads, doesn't it?" Stones the size of marbles ran through his fingers. "The international lawyers are going to have a blast figuring out who owns this stuff."

Zavala glanced toward the burial chamber. "Maybe the last owner of record is in that stone coffin."

Austin picked up a couple of spearheads. "Let's see if it's anyone we know.",

They climbed out of the boat and went back to the burial chamber. The spearheads were strong, and the points fit under the lid. No combination of leverage, even in the hands of two well-muscled and resourceful men, proved equal to the skills of those who had designed and carved the stone coffin.

"Guess we'd better go back to grave robber's school," Austin said.

Zavala checked his pressure gauge. "No time like the present. We're going to have to switch to our spare tank if we stay much longer."

"We've seen all we need to see. Maybe the scientists can make sense of all this."

He started to lead the way back to the boat chamber when the unearthly quiet of the tomb was shattered by a thunderous explosion from above their heads. Austin had a fleeting vision of what it must be like under an erupting volcano. Synapses in their brains went crazy as ageold survival instincts clashed with conflicting commands.

Run. Hit the ground. Freeze.

They fought to keep their balance as the floor shook under their feet. The explosion forced air up into the enclosed chamber, creating a wind tunnel effect. The shock wave knocked Austin and Zavala back into the crypt. Arms flailing, they slammed against the sarcophagus in a wild clatter of tanks and air hoses, then slid into the space between the stone coffin and the wall that contained it. The fall cost them cuts and bruises but probably saved their lives. A piece of ceiling as big as a diesel engine block crashed down on the spot where they'd been standing. Sharpe-dged rocks flew through the air as if they had been shot from a strafing fighter plane. A choking cloud of dust billowed into the burial chamber and covered everything with a fine whitish coating. Then a pattering of loose stones and dirt rained down.

Austin spat out a mouthful of dust and asked Zavala if he was all right.

Zavala made his presence and condition known, first with a coughing fit, then a string of curses in Spanish.

"Yeah, I'm okay" he sputtered. "How about you?" .

"I think I'm in one piece. Wish I could stop the telephone ringing in my head."

More coughs. "What happened?"

"It sounded like a combination of Vesuvius and Krakatoa. My guess leans toward a few kilos of C4 plastique explosive." Austin grunted. "I like you a lot, Joe, but I don't think we're ready to be engaged. Can you move?"