Inca Gold - Cussler Clive (читать онлайн полную книгу .TXT) 📗

    "Our rivals in the seaplane should be cutting bait and flying off into the sunset too," said Giordino.

    "To regroup and try again," said Pitt. "They're not the type to fly away from a billion dollars in treasure."

    Gunn looked up at him, surprised. "You've seen them?"

    "We waved in passing," answered Pitt without going into detail.

    "A great disappointment not to catch Doc's killer," Rodgers said sadly. "I also had high hopes of being the first to photograph the treasures and Huascar's golden chain."

    "A washout," murmured Gunn. "A damned washout."

    Shannon nodded at Rodgers. "We'd better make arrangements to return to Peru."

    Loren sank next to Gunn. "A shame after everyone worked so hard."

    Pitt suddenly returned to life, shrugging off the exhaustion and becoming his old cheerful self again. "I can't I speak for the rest of you pitiful purveyors of doom, but I'm going to take a bath, mix myself a tequila on the rocks with lime, grill a steak, get a good night's sleep, and go out in the morning and find that ugly critter guarding the treasure."

    They all stared at him as if he had suffered a mental breakdown, all that is except Giordino. He didn't need a third eye to know Pitt was scenting a trail. "You have the look of a born-again Christian. Why the about-face?"

    "Do you remember when a NUMA search team found that hundred-and-fifty-year-old steamship that belonged to the Republic of Texas navy?"

    "Back in 1987, wasn't it? The ship was the Zavala."

    "The same. And do you recall where it was found?"

    "Under a parking lot in Galveston."

    "Get the picture?"

    "I certainly don't," snapped Shannon. "What are you driving at?"

    "Whose turn is it to cook dinner?" Pitt inquired, ignoring her.

    Gunn raised a hand. "My night in the galley. Why ask?"

    "Because, after we've all enjoyed a good meal and a cocktail or two, I'll lay out Dirk's master plan."

    "Which island have you selected?" Shannon asked cynically. "Bali Ha'i or Atlantis?"

    "There is no island," Pitt answered mysteriously. "No island at all. The treasure that never was, but is, sits on dry land."

    An hour and a half later, with Giordino standing at the helm, the old ferry reversed course as her paddlewheels drove her northward back toward San Felipe. While Gunn, assisted by Rodgers, prepared dinner in the ferry's galley, Loren searched for Pitt and finally found him sitting on a folding chair down in the engine room, chatting with the chief engineer as he soaked up the sounds, smells, and motion of the Alhambra's monstrous engines. He wore the expression of a man in the throes of undisguised euphoria. She carried a small bottle of blanco tequila and a glass of ice as she crept up behind him.

    Gordo Padilla smoked the stub of a cigar while wiping a clean cloth over a pair of brass steam gauges. He wore scuffed cowboy boots, a T-shirt covered with bright illustrations of tropical birds, and a pair of pants cut off at the knees. His sleek, well-oiled hair was as thick as marsh grass, and the brown eyes in his round face wandered over the engines with the same ardor they would display if beholding the full-figured body of a model in a bikini.

    Most ship's engineers are thought to be big ebullient men with hairy chests and thick forearms illustrated with colorful tattoos. Padilla was devoid of body hair and tattoos. He looked like an ant crawling on his great walking beam engines. Diminutive, his height and weight would have easily qualified him to ride a racehorse.

    "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 feel 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?"