The Navigator (NUMA Files 7)

“Any other words of advice?” Austin’s voice echoed inside the helmet.

“Yeah,” Squire said. “Let your horse do his work, remember the third tilt, and pray for a miracle.”

He gave the horse a light slap on its flank and the giant animal lurched forward. Austin tried walking the horse in a circle. Val responded well to knee nudges. The weight and fighting equipment were awkward, but the saddle was high in the back and offered some support.

The brief rehearsal was about to come to an end.

A man dressed in the Lincoln green costume of a herald at arms blew a blast on his trumpet. The signal to get ready. Austin brought his horse around to face Baltazar. The second trumpet blast was the alert to lower lances. The third blast followed a second later.

Baltazar dug his spurs in ahead of the signal.

Austin was only a second behind.

The horses accelerated to a rolling gallop that sent clods of earth flying into the air like startled birds. The ground shook as the massive animals and the metal-skinned creatures on their backs flew toward each other in a thundering charge.

Chapter 47

USING THE BUOY LINE as a guide, Gamay and Zavala had powered their swift descent with practiced scissors kicks. The lake’s surface clarity had been deceptive. The greenish brown tint had deepened into an opaqueness that cut visibility to a few murky yards. The soupy gloom quickly absorbed the twin cones of light from their electric torches and muted the bright yellow of their wet suits.

Several feet from the bottom they hovered to keep from stirring up a cloud of blinding silt. They consulted a compass, and swam west until a shadowy mass loomed in the murk. Their flashlight beams touched a vertical surface. Glimpses of flagstones were visible in the spinachlike growth carpeting the exterior of the two-story hotel. Fish darted through the glassless windows that stared out vacantly like eye sockets in a skull.

A Donald Duck voice crackled in the headset of Zavala’s underwater communicator.

“Welcome to the friendly Hotel Gold Stream,” Gamay said.

“Every room comes with a water view,” Zavala said. “Must be off-season. No one’s around.”

Although the building was not huge, the mansard roof and stone construction gave it grandeur beyond size. They glided over the wide front porch. The portico had collapsed. Green slime covered the rotting wood where guests of a bygone era once sat in rocking chairs to take in the fresh country air.

They peeked through the entrance. The darkness was almost impenetrable, and the cold emanating from the hotel penetrated their wet suits. They swam around to the rear of the building. Zavala pointed his light at a one-story addition built onto the backside of the hotel.

“That could be the kitchen and service area,” Zavala said.

“Good call,”

Gamay said. “I think I see a stovepipe sticking out of the roof.”

They glided down a gradual slope, whose lawn had been replaced with freshwater marine vegetation, to a wide set of stone stairs. At the base of the stairs was a stone apron where the cave boats used to be kept. The granite mooring posts were still in place. The two divers plunged into the open maw.

The stalactites and stalagmites inside the cave had been worn down like the teeth of an old dog, and marine vegetation dulled their once-brilliant colors. Fantastic rock formations hinted at the strange world that once had greeted the eyes of turn-of-the-century tourists.

After swimming about a quarter of a mile against a slight current, they came to the end of the cave. The way was blocked by huge boulders. A cavity in the ceiling appeared to have been the source of the rockfall. Unable to explore farther, they returned to the mouth of the cave, making good time with the current behind them.

Minutes later, they were out of the cave and back behind the hotel. Zavala went along the outside of the service building until he came to a wide doorway. He made his way in, with Gamay right behind. The interior space was big enough to have been the dining room. Zavala swam along the walls until he found a door, and they entered the room. Their lights picked out empty cupboards and large slate sinks. A pile of rust in the corner might have been a cast-iron stove. They examined every square inch of floor. Nothing resembling a hatch cover came to their attention.

“I wonder if we’ve been ‘shafted,’ literally,” Zavala said.

“Don’t give up yet,” Gamay said. “The old kitchen worker was pretty specific. Let’s try that room.”

She swam through an opening into a space around a quarter the size of the kitchen. Shelves lined the walls, indicating the room had been a pantry. She dropped down until her face mask was inches above the floor, and, after searching for a short time, she found a rectangular raised section. She brushed away the silt and found hinges and a rusty padlock.

Zavala reached into a waterproof bag attached to the D ring of his harness and pulled out an angled pry bar around a foot long. He inserted the bar under the trapdoor cover only to have the rotten wood break into pieces. He pointed his light down the shaft. The blackness seemed to go on forever.

“I don’t hear you saying ‘Me first,”’ Gamay said.

“You are slimmer than I am,” Zavala said.

“Lucky me.”