4
Pat could not help but wonder if her mind, numbed by fright and the torment to her body from the frigid water, was playing weird tricks. Ambrose and Marquez stared blankly, unable to speak. Shock was slowly replaced with an overpowering wave of relief at suddenly having company and knowing the stranger was in contact with the world above. Cold fear abruptly evaporated, to be replaced with inspired hope.
"Where in God's name did you come from?" Marquez blurted excitedly.
"The Buccaneer Mine next door," answered the stranger, shining his dive light around the walls of the chamber before focusing its beam on the obsidian skull. "What is this place, a mausoleum?"
"No," answered Pat, "an enigma."
"I recognize you," said Ambrose. "We talked earlier today. You're with the National Underwater and Marine Agency."
"Dr. Ambrose, isn't it? I wish I could say it was a pleasure meeting you again." The stranger looked at the miner. "You must be Luis Marquez, the owner of the mine. I promised your wife I'd get you home in time for dinner. He stared at Pat and grinned slyly. "And the gorgeous lady has to be Dr. O'Connell."
"You know my name?"
"Mrs. Marquez described you," he said simply.
"How in the world did you get here?" Pat asked, still dazed.
"After learning from your sheriff that your mine entrance was covered by an avalanche, my team of NUMA engineers decided to try and reach you through one of the tunnels leading from the Buccaneer Mine to the Paradise. We'd only covered a few hundred yards when an explosion shook the mountain. When we saw water rising in the shafts and flooding both mines, we knew the only way left to reach you was by a diver swimming through the tunnels."
"You swam here from the Buccaneer Mine?" asked Marquez incredulously. "That has to be nearly half a mile."
"Actually, I was able to walk much of the distance before I entered the water," explained the stranger. "Unfortunately, the surge was more than I expected. I was towing a waterproof pack containing food and medical supplies behind me on a line, but it was torn away and lost after a torrent of water swept me against an old drill rig."
"Were you injured?" asked Pat solicitously.
"Black and blue in places I care not to mention."
"It's a miracle you found your way through that maze of tunnels to our exact location," said Marquez.
The stranger held up a small monitor, whose screen glowed an unearthly green. "An underwater computer, programmed with every shaft, crosscut, and tunnel in the Telluride canyon. Because your tunnel was blocked by the cave-in, I had to detour to a lower level, circle around, and travel from the opposite direction. As I was swimming through the tunnel, I caught the dim glimmer of light from your miner's lamp. And here I am."
"Then no one aboveground knows that we were trapped by a cave-in," stated Marquez.
"They know," the diver answered him. "My NUMA team called the sheriff as soon as we realized what happened."
Ambrose's face showed an unhealthy pallor. He failed to display the enthusiasm of the others. "Is there another member of your dive team following you?" he asked slowly.
The diver gave a slight shake of his head. "I'm alone. We were down to our last two tanks of air. I felt it was too risky for more than one man to make the attempt to reach you."
"It seems a waste of time and effort for you to have made the trip. I see little that you can do to save us."
"I may surprise you," the diver said simply.
"There is no way your twin scuba tanks hold enough air to take all four of us back through a labyrinth of flooded tunnels to the world aboveground. And since we'll either drown or die of hypothermia in the next hour, you won't have time to go and bring back help."
"You've very astute, Doctor. Two people might make it back to the Buccaneer Mine, but only two."
"Then you must take the lady."
The diver smiled ironically. "That's very noble of you, my friend, but we're not loading lifeboats on the Titanic."
"Please," begged Marquez. "The water is still rising. Take Dr. O'Connell to safety."
"If it will make you happy," he said, with seeming insensibility. He took Pat by the hand. "Have you ever used scuba gear before?"
She shook her head.
He aimed his dive light at the men. "How about you two?"
"Does it really matter?" said Ambrose solemnly.
"It does to me."
"I'm a qualified diver."
"I guessed as much. And you?"
Marquez shrugged. "I can barely swim."
The diver turned to Pat who was carefully wrapping her camera and notebook in plastic. "You swim alongside me and we'll buddy-breathe by passing the mouthpiece on my air regulator back and forth. I'll take a breath and hand it to you. You take a breath and hand it back. As soon as we drop out of this chamber, grab hold of my weight belt and hang on."
Then he turned back to Ambrose and Marquez. "Sorry to disappoint you, fellows, but if you think you're going to die, forget it. I'll be back for you in fifteen minutes."
"Please make it less." Marquez stared back from a face as gray as the granite. "The water will be over our heads in twenty minutes."
"Then I suggest you stand on tiptoe."
Taking Pat by the hand, the man from NUMA slipped beneath the water and disappeared in the murky water.
Keeping the beam of his dive light aimed ahead in the tunnel, the diver followed one of the illuminated lines displayed on his little computer. Looking up from the tiny monitor, he aimed his dive light ahead into the tunnel and swam toward the forbidding shadows. The water had risen to the roof of the tunnel, and the surge he'd experienced earlier had fallen off. He stroked and kicked his fins mightily through the flooded cavern, dragging Pat behind him.
Stealing a quick glance backward, he saw that her eyes were tightly closed, her hands clinging to his weight belt in a death grip. The eyes never opened, even as the mouthpiece to the air regulator was passed back and forth.
His decision to rely on a simple U.S. Divers' Scan face mask and a standard U.S. Diver's Aquarius scuba air regulator instead of his old reliable Mark II full face mask turned out to be wise. Traveling light made it easier for him to swim nearly half a mile through a maze of underground passages from the Buccaneer Mine, many partially filled with fallen rock and timbers. There were also dry galleries the flooding water had not yet reached, where he had to crawl and walk. Trudging over ore car rails and ties and fallen rock while toting bulky air tanks, buoyancy compensator, various gauges, a knife, and a belt loaded with lead weights was not an easy chore. The water was icy cold, but he stayed warm inside his DUI Norseman dry suit during the passages he was forced to swim. He had chosen the Norseman because it had greater ease of movement when he was out of the water.
The water was turbid and the beam from the dive light, cutting a swath in the liquid void, penetrated only ten feet into the murk. He counted the shoring timbers as they passed, trying to gain a perspective on how far they had traveled. At last the tunnel made a sharp turn and ended in a gallery that led to a vertical shaft. He entered the shaft and felt as if he had been swallowed by an alien monster from the depths. Two minutes later, they broke the surface, and he aimed the dive light into the black above. A horizontal tunnel leading on to the next level of the Paradise Mine beckoned forty feet above.
Pat smoothed the hair from her face and stared wide-eyed at him. It was then he saw that her eyes were a lovely shade of olive green. "We made it," she gasped, coughing and spitting water from her mouth. "You knew about this shaft?"
Holding up the directional computer, he said, "This little gem led the way." He placed her hands on the slimy rungs of a badly rusted ladder leading upward. "Do you think you can make it up to the next level on your own?"