Serpent (NUMA Files 1)

Austin listened, eyes half dosed in a sleeping lion imitation, absorbing every word and inflection, tumbling the facts over in his mind, looking for inconsistencies with the first account.

When she had finished he said, "I think you're right not going with Captain Mustapha's bandit theory. Bandits might have killed some of your people trying to rob them, but from what you described this was a deliberate massacre."

"What about Muslim fundamentalist terrorists?" Zavala ventured. "They've killed thousands of people in Algiers."

"Maybe, but terrorists usually like to advertise what they've done. This bunch went out of its way to hide evidence. Why would fundamentalists destroy the stone figure? That's another thing that bothers me, by the way. They'd need specialized explosives to do that."

"Which means they would have known about the statue ahead of time," Zavala said.

"That's right. They came prepared for underwater demolition."

"Impossible," Nina responded. Then, less sure, she said, "I don't see how they could have known about it."

"Me neither," Zavala said. "You're certain they spoke Spanish?"

Sh

e nodded emphatically

Austin said, "You can practically walk to Spain across the Strait of Gibraltar from Tangier, and that's not far from here."

Zavala shook his head. "Doesn't mean a thing. I speak Spanish, but I'm a Mexican American who's never been to Spain."

Nina remembered something. "Oh, that reminds me. I forgot about Gonzalez."

"Who is Gonzalez?" Austin said.

"He was a volunteer on the expedition. Actually, he paid to be on it through a nonprofit organization called Time-Quest. I saw him talking to a man, a stranger in a Jeep, yesterday afternoon. Gonzalez said the man was lost. At the time I thought it was peculiar."

"You thought right," Austin said. "It could be nothing, but we'll run a check on Time-Quest and see if they have anything on Gonzalez. I assume he was killed with the others."

"I didn't see him, but I don't know how he could have escaped."

"What about the hovercraft that chased Nina?" Zavala asked Austin. "Maybe there's a lead there."

"From what I could see at water level, it looked like a custom model. Maybe a Griffon made in England. I called NUMA earlier and asked them to run a check on the owners of all

Griffon hovercraft. There can't be too many of them in the world. My guess is they bought it through a dummy corporation."

"Which means they've made it hard to trace."

"Maybe even impossible, but it's worth a try." He stared off into space, thinking. "We're still faced with the main question: why would anybody want to wipe out a harmless archaeological expedition?"

Nina had been sitting with her chin resting on her hand. "Maybe it wasn't so harmless," she ventured.

"What do you mean?"

"I keep coming back to the Olmec figure. It's at the center of things."

I'm still having a problem with the Olmec part. Especially since it was turned into a load of gravel."

"It's not just my evaluation. You've got to remember it was Sandy who ID'd it. She's one of the most respected Meso-american specialists in the country. Sanford's done papers and field work on all the big sites like Tikal and a lot of lesserknown but important finds."

"Okay, let's say you and Sandy are right. Why is the figure significant?"

"It could shake up the archaeological and historical community. For years people have wondered whether there was contact between the Old and New Worlds before Columbus."

"Like Leif Eriksson and the Vikings? I thought there was pretty conclusive evidence of that," Zavala said.