er the great beyond after an audacious attempt at staying alive than to throw in the towel and go out like a dishrag, he concluded. Perhaps other adventurous explorers would give up everything they owned for the honor of entering this mineralogical sanctum sanctorum, but all Pitt wanted now was to get out. He rose to his feet, inflated the buoyancy compensator with his breath and walked into the water until he was adrift in the current that carried him along.
Just take it one cavern at a time, he told himself, flashing the light on the water ahead. There was no relying on eternal vigilance. He was too weak to fight rapids and fend off rocks. He could only be calm and go wherever the current took him. He soon felt as if he had been cruising from one gallery to another for a lifetime.
The roof of the caverns and galleries rose and fell with monotonous regularity for the next 10
kilometers (6.2 miles). Then he heard the dreaded rumble of approaching rapids. Thankfully, the first chute Pitt encountered was of medium roughness. The water crashed against his face and he went under churning froth several times before reaching placid water again.
He was granted a comfortable reprieve as the river turned smooth and ran through one long canyon in an immense gallery. When he reached the end nearly an hour later, the roof gradually sloped down until it touched the water. He filled his lungs to the last crowded millimeter and dived. Able to use only one arm and missing his swim fins, the going was slow. He aimed the flashlight at the jagged rock roof and swam on his back. His lungs began to protest the lack of oxygen, but he swam on. At last the light revealed an air pocket. He shot to the surface and mightily inhaled the pure, unpolluted air that had been trapped deep beneath the earth millions of years ago.
The small cave widened into a large cavern whose ceiling arched beyond the beam of the flashlight.
The river made a sweeping turn where it had formed a reef of polished gravel. Pitt crawled painfully onto the dry area to rest. He turned off the light to prolong the life of the batteries.
Abruptly, he flicked the flash on again. Something had caught his eye in the shadows before the light blinked out. Something was there, not 5 meters (16 feet) away, a black form that revealed a straight line aberrant to natural geometrics.
Pitt's spirits soared as he recognized the battered remains of the Wallowing Windbag. Incredibly, the Hovercraft had come through the horrific fall over the cataract and had been cast up here after drifting nearly 40 kilometers. At last a gleam of hope. He stumbled across the gravel beach to the rubber hull and examined it under his light.
The engine and fan had been torn from their mountings and were missing. Two of the air chambers were punctured and deflated, but the remaining six still held firm. Some of the equipment was swept away, but four air tanks, the first-aid kit, Duncan's plastic ball of colored water dye tracer, one of Giordino's paddles, two extra flashlights, and the waterproof container with Admiral Sandecker's thermos of coffee and four bologna sandwiches had miraculously survived.
"It seems my state of affairs has considerably improved," Pitt said happily to nobody but the empty cavern.
He began with the first-aid kit. After liberally soaking the shoulder wound with disinfectant, he awkwardly applied a crude bandage on it inside his tattered wet suit. Knowing it was useless to bind fractured ribs, he gritted his teeth, set his wrist and taped it.
The coffee had retained most of its heat inside the thermos, and he downed half of it before attacking the sandwiches. No medium-rare porterhouse steak, doused and flamed in cognac, tasted better than this bologna, Pitt decided. Then and there he vowed never to complain or make jokes about bologna sandwiches ever again.
After a brief rest, a goodly measure of his strength returned and he felt refreshed enough to resecure the equipment and break open Duncan's plastic dye container. He scattered Fluorescein Yellow with Optical Brightener into the water. Under the beam of his flashlight he watched until the dye stained the river with a vivid yellow luminescence. He stood and watched until the current swept it out of sight.
"That should tell them I'm coming," he thought aloud.
He pushed the remains of the Hovercraft out of the shallows. Favoring his injuries, he awkwardly climbed aboard and paddled one-handed into the mainstream.
As the partially deflated Wallowing Windbag caught the current and drifted downriver, Pitt leaned back comfortably and began humming the tune to "Up a Lazy River in the Noonday Sun."
Informed of up-to-the-minute events from california by Admiral Sandecker and agents Gaskill and Ragsdale in El Paso, the secretary of state decided to sidestep diplomatic protocol and personally call the President of Mexico. He briefed him on the far-reaching theft and smuggling conspiracy engineered by the Zolars.
"An incredible story," said Mexico's President.
"But true," the secretary of state assured him.
"I can only regret the incident occurred, and I promise my government's full cooperation with the investigation."
"If you'll forgive me, Mr. President, I do have a wish list of requests."
"Let's hear them."
Within two hours the border between Mexico and California was reopened. The government officials who were suckered by the Zolars into jeopardizing their positions by false promises of incredible riches were rounded up.
Fernando Matos and Police Comandante Rafael Cortina were among the first to be arrested by Mexican Justice investigators.
At the same time, vessels of the Mexican navy attached to the Sea of Cortez were alerted and ordered to sea.
Lieutenant Carlos Hidalgo peered up at a squawking gull before turning his attention back to the straight line of the sea across the horizon. "Are we searching for anything special, or just searching?" he casually asked his ship's captain.
"Looking for bodies," Commander Miguel Maderas replied. He lowered his binoculars, revealing a round, friendly face under long, thick black hair. His teeth were large and very white and almost always set in a Burt Lancaster smile. He was short and heavy and solid as a rock.
Hidalgo was a sharp contrast to Maderas. Tall and lean with a narrow face, he looked like a well-tanned cadaver. "Victims of a boating accident?"
"No, divers who drowned in an underground river."