Miranda however had other ideas. She twisted around, fixing him with another Medusa glare, and then kicked her legs hard, fighting the downward drag. One of her sweeping flippers struck his arm, breaking his grip, which not only caused her to jet away like a torpedo, but caused Maddock to sink like a stone.
He spat out his regulator, calling a warning into the water, but Miranda never looked back.
Miranda had no idea why Maddock had gone mental and attacked her. Maybe he had gotten his tanks mixed up and was breathing some exotic gas mixture. Maybe he had just panicked.
Or maybe he and his friends are going to try to steal the disk.
She doubted that was the case, but couldn’t think of a better explanation to explain the former SEAL’s outrageous behavior.
She broke the surface, and immediately kicked back, trying to put some distance between herself and Bones. The big Native American was grinning like a crazy man.
“What the hell?” she shouted.
But then she realized he wasn’t grinning exactly. It was more of a grimace. Through his clenched teeth, he said. “We’ve got company.”
It was like déjà vu all over again. A rough-looking local — not one of the pair she had run off earlier, but someone new — loomed above her and Bones. The only difference this time was that the man had a big Magnum revolver pointed down at them.
She had badly underestimated both the resolve and the resources of the local hoodlums.
“Stop wasting my time,” the man shouted. He spoke English with only a slight accent. “Give me what you found, or we’ll kill your friends.”
With that ominous threat, the man drew back, but reappeared a moment later, gripping Angel’s ponytail with one hand. The other held the muzzle of the pistol to Angel’s jaw.
Miranda gasped involuntarily. Where was her father? Dead already?
Bones brought his hands out of the water. “Whoa. Slow your roll, homeboy. You got the pistol, so you keep the pesos. Does that seem fair?”
The man jabbed the pistol at Bones again. “The treasure you found. Bring it up.”
“What this?” Bones poked a finger at the yellow lift bag. “I got a keg of beer on the other end of this. Mucho cerveza, comprende? The cenote’s the perfect place to keep it cool.”
Miranda gaped at him. Bones was a cool customer, she had to give him that, but his bravado was going to get them all killed.
Speaking of which, where was Maddock?
“I’m not going to tell you again!” The man shook Angel again.
“Good. ‘Cause I’m tired of listening to you repeat yourself.”
“What the hell are you doing?” Miranda hissed.
Bones threw her a sidelong glance and spoke through his teeth again. “What do you think I’m doing? I’m stalling.”
He looked back up at the man with the gun pressed to Angel’s neck. “Okay, you win. But this thing’s heavy as hell. I’m not going to be able to pull it up the ladder. So either you let me come up there first, or you’re going to have to pull it up.”
The man shook his head, then shifted his aim, training the big pistol on Miranda. “You. Climb up with the rope.”
“Do it,” Bones said under his breath. “Play along. Buy us some time.”
“For what?”
“Now!” shouted the gunman. “Move.”
Miranda threw up her hands. “Okay. I’m moving.”
She swam closer to Bones and gripped the mesh bag with the gold disk. She could feel its heaviness, its solidity. Getting out of the cenote with it wasn’t going to be easy, but that gave her an idea.
As she paddled over to the rope ladder, she slid her hand up a few inches, letting her fingers curl around the spring-loaded locking bar of the carabiner that connected the mesh bag to the yellow balloon. She reached up, gripped one of the rungs, and pulled herself up, and as she did, she gave the carabiner a squeeze and a twist.
Suddenly, the lift bag was light as air in her hand.
“Crap!” she said, feigning frustration. “It slipped.”
Bones was quick to catch on. “Sorry, dudes. We’ll have to go back down for it. Might take a few minutes.”
The gunman leaned forward, his face growing dark with rage. He stabbed the gun down at Miranda. “Are you kidding?” he hissed. “That was a big mistake.”
Miranda saw his finger tightening on the trigger, and decided that he was probably right about that.
CHAPTER 7
Maddock plunged into the passage, swimming like the world’s biggest bull shark was nipping at his flippers. While he didn’t know for sure what had prompted Bones to wave him off, two things were certain: he couldn’t surface, and he couldn’t stay under indefinitely. That left him with only one viable option: Find another way out, and fast.
Air wasn’t going to be a problem, or at least, not the most urgent one. He had at least an hour’s worth of air in his main tank, which was plenty of time to explore the passages in the other cavern, but it was doubtful that his friends had that long.
He emerged into the cavern with the altar, and immediately turned to the right, and then turned again, plunging into the next passage. It was narrower than the other tunnel, and just a few yards in, it began sloping down. Maddock’s first impulse was to stop and head back, but there wasn’t enough room for him to turn around, so he kept going, praying the passage would eventually widen out enough for him to reverse course.
It didn’t, and the slope remained constant, taking him deeper. Deeper underground was bad because it took him further from the people who needed his help, but deeper underwater was a lot worse because of the increasing risk of decompression sickness. He finally stopped, unbuckled his harness and shrugged out of it, letting it fall. He kicked forward a few more feet then rolled over and did a half-somersault that ended with him facing back up the passage.
Except now the passage was filled with an impenetrable cloud of sediment.
Maddock resisted the impulse to waste breath on a self-directed curse, and instead angled his body down and plunged headlong into the blinding murk. After a second or two, his groping hands encountered the rough stone floor of the passage. He swam forward, fighting back the almost overwhelming urge to freak the hell out.
His SCUBA gear was close by, right where he had dropped it, and he could hold his breath for a good two minutes.
Plenty of time.
His hand snagged something that wasn’t unyielding stone. After a few seconds of patient probing, he realized that it was one of the supply hoses attached to his regulator, and after a few more seconds, he found the mouthpiece, bit down on it and took a much-needed breath. His sense of relief however was fleeting. He was no closer to helping his friends, and the clock was still ticking relentlessly forward.
He kicked forward, deeper into the gloom, one hand extended to the wall of the passage, the other dragging the SCUBA rig along with him. The silt cloud diminished a little and soon his field of view was clear again, but he waited until he was back in the main cavern to slip back into the harness.
One down. Ten more to go.
He shook his head. Trial and error wasn’t going to cut it. There was no guarantee that any of the passages would lead him back to the surface. He couldn’t afford any more dead ends or worse, risk getting lost in a submerged maze. If he couldn’t find some way to reduce the uncertainty of his choices, he would have to take his chances with the front door.
Except, the passage back to the cenote didn’t feel like a front door. If anything, it felt more like an afterthought; a way to drown the underground temple or crypt to hide its existence.