“Kinda spooky in here,” Jayden said.
“Can’t wait to see what it looks like down there!” Hunt picked up a scuba tank and began setting it up. “Let’s do this.”
A few minutes later he and Jayden stood on the edge of the indoor body of water — what could be called either a large pool or a small artificial lake — adjusting their face masks.
Hunt looked to Jayden. “Would have been nice to have the full face masks with integrated intercoms like we had in the navy, right?”
“It’s okay, I can go without hearing your sweet voice for an hour or so.”
The laughter from the crew echoed throughout the chamber as the pair of divers walked out from the edge of the shore and then slipped beneath the water. They paused just beneath the surface, marveling at the crystal clear visibility. After a minute Hunt poked his head back above the surface and lifted his mask up on his forehead so he could talk to Madison and the crew.
“Even though the water’s super-clear, we still can’t see the bottom — it slopes down out of sight into what looks like a jumble of stone blocks. That’s all I can tell for sure from here. We’ll go down there and check it out.”
“Be careful, you two!” Maddy said.
Hunt gave her the okay sign before slipping back beneath the water. He caught up with Jayden, who was about ten feet below him, sinking slowly into the crystal grotto. So far it reminded him of a cavern dive — an enclosed space that was more wide open than a true cave, which tended to be narrower with branching passages. Without daylight deep inside the pyramid, it was nearly dark already even though they were still in shallow water. Hunt switched on his dive light and Jayden did the same. The two divers continued their descent into the flooded chamber. They went slowly, since it was so clear as to be vertigo-inducing — the sensation that they were suspended in air over a jumble of boulders was a strange one. Hunt kept a close eye on his depth gauge. When it indicated that there was 100 feet of water over their heads, he tapped Jayden on the shoulder and indicated they should pause and have a look around.
The deeper they went, the less the compressed air in the tanks on their backs would last, and so Hunt wanted to take stock of their surroundings and make sure that if they went deeper, that there was a reason to do so. Swimming around blindly was not the prudent thing to do.
So he and Jayden planted their fins on two flat slabs of rock. The entire way down was lined with them, like a never-ending hill comprised of massive rock slabs strewn about. Hunt could see nothing particularly interesting among them, though — no artifacts or anything, for that matter, other than the slabs themselves. To his untrained eye they looked like the same stone that was used to construct the rest of the great pyramid, and he supposed that’s what they were. Perhaps this was a quarry or dumping ground of some sort for extra rock when they were building the legendary tomb? He made a mental note to ask Madison. He took a few snapshots of the scene with an underwater camera so that Madison and her team would have a firsthand look later.
He suggested to Jayden that they swim laterally across the room at this same depth, but while looking down to see if they could spot anything of interest. Jayden gave him the okay sign and the two kicked off the slab and finned their way out toward the middle of the chamber. While not cold, Hunt was beginning to feel the chill of the water at this depth, and was glad to get moving again for the warmth his muscles would generate. The scenery was much the same as they swam across: a sloping pile of large rock slabs and boulders, stretching down to some unknown depth. They had almost reached the other side of the chamber when something far below caught Hunt’s eye.
He stopped kicking along and rested on one of the slabs while focusing his attention on what lay below. It was the color that had caught his attention. Brown or maybe tan. Either way, it stood in sharp contrast to the sandy shade of the building rocks. Hunt glanced at his air pressure gauge and indicated for Jayden to do the same. They both still had enough for a swim down to the mystery object. Hunt pointed down to it and watched Jayden raise his eyebrows.
Then Hunt released some air from his buoyancy vest so that he would sink, and started to swim down toward the object.
Chapter 4
The unusual object looked a lot closer than it was. That’s what ran through Hunt’s mind as he and Jayden dropped down into the flooded chamber. The jumble of stone slabs and boulders became more complex as they dropped, forming small hillocks they had to swim either over or around, and large caves they had to swim through in order to continue downward.
But the sight of the object quickened his pulse and led him down further. He glanced at his depth gauge while passing over a concave block section: 125 feet. Too deep to stay down much longer, but the object — now it looked like it could be something interesting, since he saw what appeared to be sculpted detail — still lay some distance down the flooded slope. The extreme water clarity made it difficult to accurately gauge distance. Jayden tapped his shoulder and showed him his air gauge. He, too, was concerned about the depth. Hunt pointed to his watch and held up five fingers, indicating how many more minutes they would spend down here before beginning their return to the surface.
Then they kicked their way toward the light brown object. Hunt’s curiosity grew with every fin stroke as they neared the unknown curiosity. So far, anyway, it appeared to be the only thing in here that wasn’t a building rock. So what was it?
Hunt swept his light beam left to right and back again, scanning the area for anything that might be either noteworthy from an archaeological standpoint, or else a potential danger to themselves. So far he saw neither except for the brownish object, a little lighter in tone than the surrounding rock, which he now guessed was some sort of statue. He and Jayden stopped a few feet from it so as not to disturb it. Both of them played their light beams across the strange find.
Within a few seconds, Hunt was pretty sure he knew what it was, but he wanted to look at it from another angle to be sure, so he swam around the object to his right until he could see another side of it. His suspicion was confirmed.
He was looking at a life-size head, made of what looked to him to be bronze. The head was detached from whatever it had been attached to, whether a full body statue or some kind of pedestal base for the bust alone. Aware that they were rapidly running out of time down here, Hunt quickly snapped off a couple of pictures of the object so that Madison and her team could see it exactly as they had found it.
Then Hunt moved to the statue. He pointed to it and, after making eye contact with Jayden, pointed to the surface. He was going to try and bring it back up. Jayden shrugged and pointed to his watch, the meaning clear to Hunt: Okay, if you can do it, but better hurry up about it.
Hunt eyeballed the way the bronze head lay amidst the crux of stone blocks. It was situated such that it lay over a foot-wide gap; were it to drop into that after being dislodged, it would be unrecoverable. So Hunt made sure to place one hand firmly beneath the head before attempting to lift it out. Then he tried to lift, grunting with the exertion. He made eye contact with Jayden after not having immediate success. This thing is heavy! Then he redoubled his efforts and tried again, this time able to anticipate what he was up against. Bracing a knee against a stone slab, and an elbow against another, he put the muscles of his entire body into wedging the heavy statue head up and out of the crevice it had rested in for untold years.
Slowly and surely, Hunt lifted the artifact from the rocky wedge until it was cradled only in his arms. As he prepared to turn toward Jayden so as to get some support from him, he glanced down through the crack now that it was easier to see down into it without the bronze head being there.