So certain was he that he returned to the altar and scooped up the jade idol with one hand. The relic would ensure safe passage through the jungle; the snake-men would revere him as the servant of their false god.
He emerged once more from the structure and began his descent. The creatures below remained motionless, but it was not until Alvarez neared the bottom of the pyramid that he saw why.
The snake-men had turned to stone.
Some part of him knew this could not be true. What he had taken for kneeling figures were actually ancient stone effigies, overgrown with dark moss. He even thought he remembered passing them during his mad dash across the courtyard.
But he also knew that these were the snake-men, the very same creatures that had attacked the party in the jungle. And he knew with equal certainty that they would not come back to life in order to menace him now.
There was no longer anything to fear. He knew exactly what he had to do next.
With the jade figurine still tucked under one arm, he headed across the courtyard and into the loving embrace of the dark forest.
CHAPTER 1
Miranda Bell rapped her knuckles against the molded plastic body of the dive light and worked the switch again. This time, the bulb lit up, shooting out a beam of white light. She worked the switch again, on and off several times, until she was satisfied that the problem had fixed itself, then slipped the pistol-shaped flashlight into a carrier on her hip.
The light, like the rest of the gear they’d rented from the dive shop in Tulum, was serviceable if somewhat antiquated. She had always used only the best equipment, sometimes field testing prototypes and cutting edge technologies unavailable to the public at large, but that had been in another life. Now she had to make do with whatever semi-obsolete, off-the-shelf equipment she could get her hands on.
She did a final head-to-toe check, then sat down at the edge of the cenote, letting her long legs dangle out over the azure water. She took a breath from the second-stage line of the regulator attached to the AL80 SCUBA bottle on her back to ensure the air was flowing, then turned and looked up at the anxious face of Charles Bell, her father.
“Don’t run off,” she quipped, before placing the mouthpiece between her teeth.
“Miranda,” he pleaded. “Just wait. Half an hour. They’ll be here.”
Miranda fought the urge to roll her eyes. Her father was just being over-protective, which was, she supposed, his job as a father, but she had no intention of waiting for his so-called marine salvage experts to arrive. Knowing Bell, they were probably some over-priced tour guides who would probably shut them down and call in the local authorities when they realized what they had found.
Sometimes he could be so clueless about the way the world worked.
What they had found, or at least what they thought they had found, was a previously undiscovered cenote, which was remarkable because the area around Tulum had been extensively explored and mapped, particularly here in the government designated archaeological preserve. The cenote was larger than some she had seen, and not as overgrown. They had stumbled across it during a hike through the forest, and at first believed they must be lost because it did not appear on the map. How this particular hole had gone unnoticed for so long was anyone’s guess, but if it was truly uncharted, there was a good chance of finding artifacts of real value inside, which was all the more reason for her to make the dive now, without waiting for the experts.
“I’ll be fine, Dad,” she assured him, and then tapped the GoPro which rested just above the top of her mask. “It’s recording, right?”
She knew it was and was only asking to distract him so he wouldn’t delay her any longer. Bell held up his tablet computer, which displayed the live video signal from the digital camera. Because she was looking at him, the screen showed Bell holding up the tablet. Some deficiency of the technology prevented the image from repeating to infinity, but the effect was surreal nonetheless. The wi-fi signal from the digital camera would be lost once she was submerged, so Bell would have to wait until she returned to see the fruits of her exploratory dive.
Miranda nodded and then inserted the mouthpiece and scooted forward, dropping down into the water. The weight of her gear bore her down quickly, but only for a second or two, just enough for her to feel the pressure against her inner ear.
Below the surface, the white limestone seemed to glow a cool blue, like some kind of weird radioactive element. The water, only slightly brackish, was crystal clear but the hole was so deep that sunlight did not reach the bottom.
She popped her ears to equalize the pressure and switched on her dive light, probing the depths of the hole. Although the entrance at the surface was only about twenty-five feet in diameter, the cenote — which had, hundreds of thousands of years earlier, been a mostly dry cavern, hollowed out of the limestone karst by geological forces — broadened out in all directions. The overhanging ceiling blocked out most of the daylight, leaving the subsurface environment in a state of perpetual gloom, broken only by the cone of illumination cast by the light in her hand. Her bubbles were glittering silvery globes racing to pool on the stone ceiling above, while she continued at a more leisurely pace in the opposite direction.
The cenote did not have a flat bottom like a swimming pool or well, but undulated in a series of upright protrusions and deep crevices. It reminded Miranda of a gigantic molar. This impression was reinforced by a brownish silt layer that covered the rises, like an accumulation of plaque on a tooth. She knew better than to disturb the silt. Doing so would raise a cloud of the fine particles, effectively rendering her blind, but she nevertheless played her light over the surfaces, looking for any hint of something that might justify temporarily sacrificing visibility.
Something glinted from a shelf of rock off to her left. She swam toward it, her pulse quickening as she imagined carefully brushing away the sediment to reveal a priceless golden artifact.
Just one would be enough to put her father back on top of his game.
But even before she uncovered it, disappointment dashed her hope. An object lay there, an artifact made by human hands, but it wasn’t made of precious metal and it wasn’t from the Maya civilization. It was a beer bottle. The glint she had seen was from the gold foil around the neck. The label was still intact, and even through the silt she could make out the word: Modelo.
Not undiscovered after all, she thought miserably, kicking back toward the center.
Still, a single piece of discarded trash did not mean the depths of the cenote had been completely plumbed. She swam in a wide circle, looking for a channel or crevasse that might take her deeper still.
After completing a full revolution around the irregular circumference, she moved toward the center and began another circuit, repeating the process in a concentric fashion until she had visually surveyed every square inch of the bottom of the cenote. She noted several deep crevasses, some that looked promising but ultimately yielded nothing of interest, not even more detritus of the modern world.
She checked her pressure and calculated that her air supply would hold out for at least another half-hour. She wasn’t deep enough to worry about decompression stops, though given her actual time at depth, it would probably be a good idea to make a slow ascent. That still left her with plenty of time to explore, but she didn’t really see the point. The cenote was, in every sense but the literal, a dry hole, and besides, her father was probably tearing his hair out. It was time to head back up.