Atlantis Found (Dirk Pitt 15)

"But how--"

"Not how, but why?" Marquez brushed by the anthropologist's legs as he crawled on all fours searching for his hard hat.

"Are you saying that someone purposely set off explosives to seal the mine?" Pat asked, bewildered.

"I'll damn well find out if we get out of here." Marquez found his hat, set it over his dust-coated hair, and switched on the little light. "There, that's better."

The little light gave but token illumination inside the chamber. The settling dust had the eerie and forbidding look of a waterfront fog. They all looked like statues under the dust, their faces and clothing the color of the surrounding gray granite.

"I don't care for the way you said ìf.' "

"Depends on which side of the cleft the tunnel collapsed. Farther into the mine, we'll be clear. But if the roof fell somewhere between here and the exit shaft, we have a problem. I'll go and take a look."

Before Pat could say another word, the miner had slipped through the hole and the chamber was thrown back into absolute darkness. Ambrose and Pat stood silent in a sea of suffocating blackness, the initial traces of terror and panic seeping into their minds. Less than five minutes had passed before Marquez returned. They could not

see his face because of the beam from his hard hat light in their eyes, but they sensed that he was a man who had seen and touched doom.

"I'm afraid the news is all bad," he said slowly. "The cave-in is only a short distance down the tunnel toward the shaft. I estimate that the fall extends a good thirty yards or more. It'll take days, maybe weeks for rescuers to clear the rubble, timbering as they go."

Ambrose stared closely at the miner, searching for any expression of hope. Seeing none, he said, "But they will get us out before we starve?"

"Starving isn't our problem," Marquez said, unable to hide the tone of despair that had crept into his voice. "Water is rising in the tunnel. It's already flooded up to three feet."

It was then Pat saw that Marquezs pants up to his knees were soaking wet. "Then we're trapped in this hellhole with no way out?"

"I didn't say that!" the miner snapped back. "There's a good chance the water will run off into a crosscut tunnel before reaching the chamber."

"But you can't be sure," said Ambrose.

"We'll know in the next few hours," Marquez hedged.

Pat's face was pale and her breath was coming slowly through lips tainted with the dust. She became gripped with cold fear as she heard the first sounds of the water swirling outside the chamber. At first the volume had not been great, but it was increasing rapidly. Her eyes met Ambrose's gaze. He could not hide the dread that was written in his face.

"I wonder," she whispered softly, "what it's like to drown."

The minutes passed like years and the next two hours crawled like centuries as the water rose steadily higher until it surged through the hole in the chamber floor and pooled around their feet. Paralyzed with terror, Pat pressed her back and shoulders against the wall, trying vainly to gain an extra few seconds from the relentless onslaught of the water. She silently prayed that it would miraculously stop before it climbed over their shoulders.

The horror of dying a thousand feet under the earth, smothered in black gloom, was a nightmare too ghastly to accept. She recalled reading about the bodies of cave divers who had become lost in a maze of underwater caverns and been found with their fingers rubbed raw to the bone where they had tried to claw their way through solid rock.

The men stood quiet, their mood somber from the buried solitude. Marquez was unable to believe that some unknown party had tried to murder them. There was no rhyme or reason to such an act, no motive.

His conscious thoughts languished on the grief that would soon overcome his family.

Pat thought of her daughter and felt a deep sense of desolation, knowing that she would not be there to see her only child grow to womanhood. It did not seem fair that she would die deep in the bowels of the earth within a bleak and barren chamber, her body never to be found. She wanted to cry, but tears refused to fall.

All conversation died when water reached their knees. It continued rising until it reached their hips. It was ice cold and stabbed their flesh like thousands of tiny nails. Pat began to shiver, and her teeth chattered uncontrollably. Ambrose, recognizing the warning signs of hypothermia, waded over and put his arms around her. It was a kind and thoughtful act, and she felt grateful. She stared in rapt terror at the hideous black water that swirled beneath the yellow glow of Marquezs lamp, reflecting on the cold forbidding surface.

Then suddenly Pat thought she saw something, sensed it actually. "Turn off your light," she murmured to Marquez.

"What?"

"Turn off your light. I think something is down there."

The men were certain that fear had caused her to hallucinate, but Marquez nodded, reached up, and switched off the hard hat's little light. The chamber was immediately thrown into hellish blackness.

"What is it you think you see?" Ambrose asked softly.

"A glow," she murmured.