Inca Gold (Dirk Pitt 12)

"Rosa, my wife," he said between swallows of Tecate beer, "she thinks I love these engines more than her. I tell her they better than a mistress. Much cheaper and I never have to sneak around alleys to see them."

"Women have never understood the affection a man can have for a machine," Pitt agreed.

"Women can't f

eel passionate about greasy gears and pistons," said Loren, slipping a hand down the front of Pitt's aloha shirt, "because they don't love back."

"Ah, but pretty lady," said Padilla, "you can't imagine the satisfaction we feel after seducing an engine into running smoothly."

Loren laughed. "No, and I don't want to." She looked up at the huge A-frame that supported the walking beams, and then to the great cylinders, steam condensers, and boilers. "But I must admit, it's an impressive apparatus."

"Apparatus?" Pitt squeezed her around the waist. "In light of modern diesel turbines, walking beam engines seem antiquated. But when you look back on the engineering and manufacturing techniques that were state-of-the-art during their era, they are monuments to the genius of our forefathers."

She passed him the little bottle of tequila and the glass of ice. "Enough of this masculine crap about smelly old engines. Swill this down. Dinner will be ready in ten minutes."

"You have no respect for the finer things in life," said Pitt, nuzzling her hand.

"Make your choice. The engines or me?"

He looked up at the piston rod as it pumped the walking beam up and down. "I can't deny having an obsession with the stroke of an engine." He smiled slyly. "But I freely confess there's a lot to be said for stroking something that's soft and cuddly."

"Now there's a comforting thought for all the women of the world."

Jesus dropped down the ladder from the car deck and said something in Spanish to Padilla. He listened, nodded, and looked at Pitt. "Jesus says the lights of a plane have been circling the ferry for the past half hour."

Pitt stared for a moment at the giant crank that turned the paddlewheels. Then he gave Loren a squeeze and said briefly, "A good sign."

"A sign of what?" she asked curiously.

"The guys on the other side," he said in a cheery voice. "They've failed and now they hope to follow us to the mother lode. That gives an advantage to our team."

After a hearty dinner on one of the thirty tables in the yawning, unobstructed passengers' section of the ferry, the table was cleared and Pitt spread out a nautical chart and two geological land survey maps. Pitt spoke to them distinctly and precisely, laying out his thoughts so clearly they might have been their own.

"The landscape is not the same. There have been great changes in the past almost five hundred years."

He paused and pieced together the three maps, depicting an uninterrupted view of the desert terrain from the upper shore of the Gulf north to the Coachella Valley of California.

"Thousands of years ago the Sea of Cortez used to stretch over the present-day Colorado Desert and Imperial Valley above the Salton Sea. Through the centuries, the Colorado River flooded and carried enormous amounts of silt into the sea, eventually forming a delta and diking in the northern area of the sea. This buildup of silt left behind a large body of water that was later known as Lake Cahuilla, named, I believe, after the Indians who lived on its banks. As you travel around the foothills that rim the basin, you can still see the ancient waterline and find seashells scattered throughout the desert.

"When did it dry up?" asked Shannon.

"Between 1100 and 1200 A.D."

"Then where did the Salton Sea come from?"

"In an attempt to irrigate the desert, a canal was built to carry water from the Colorado River. In 1905, after unseasonably heavy rains and much silting, the river burst the banks of the canal and water poured into the lowest part of the desert's basin. A desperate dam operation stopped the flow, but not before enough water had flowed through to form the Salton Sea, with a surface eighty meters below sea level. Actually, it's a large lake that will eventually go the way of Lake Cahuilla, despite irrigation drainage that has temporarily stabilized its present size."

Gunn produced a bottle of Mexican brandy. "A short intermission for spirits to rejuvenate the bloodstream." Lacking the proper snifter goblets, he poured the brandy into plastic cups. Then he raised his. "A toast to success."

"Hear, hear," said Giordino. "Amazing how a good meal and a little brandy changes one's attitude."

"We're all hoping Dirk has discovered a new solution," said Loren.

"Interesting to see if he makes sense." Shannon made an impatient gesture. "Let's hear where all this is going."

Pitt said nothing but leaned over the maps and drew a circular line through the desert with a red felt-tip pen. "This is approximately where the Gulf extended in the late fourteen hundreds, before the river's silt buildup worked south."

"Less than a kilometer from the present border between the United States and Mexico," observed Rodgers.