The stranger held up a small monitor, whose screen glowed an unearthly green. "An underwater computer, programmed with every shaft, crosscut, and tunnel in the Telluride canyon. Because your tunnel was blocked by the cave-in, I had to detour to a lower level, circle around, and travel from the opposite direction. As I was swimming through the tunnel, I caught the dim glimmer of light from your miner's lamp. And here I am."

"Then no one aboveground knows that we were trapped by a cave-in," stated Marquez.

"They know," the diver answered him. "My NUMA team called the sheriff as soon as we realized what happened."

Ambrose's face showed an unhealthy pallor. He failed to display the enthusiasm of the others. "Is there another member of your dive team following you?" he asked slowly.

The diver gave a slight shake of his head. "I'm alone. We were down to our last two tanks of air. I felt it was too risky for more than one man to make the attempt to reach you."

"It seems a waste of time and effort for you to have made the trip. I see little that you can do to save us."

"I may surprise you," the diver said simply.

"There is no way your twin scuba tanks hold enough air to take all four of us back through a labyrinth of flooded tunnels to the world aboveground. And since we'll either drown or die of hypothermia in the next hour, you won't have time to go and bring back help."

"You've very astute, Doctor. Two people might make it back to the Buccaneer Mine, but only two."

"Then you must take the lady."

The diver smiled ironically. "That's very n.o.ble of you, my friend, but we're not loading lifeboats on the t.i.tanic."

"Please," begged Marquez. "The water is still rising. Take Dr. O'Connell to safety."

"If it will make you happy," he said, with seeming insensibility. He took Pat by the hand. "Have you ever used scuba gear before?"

She shook her head.

He aimed his dive light at the men. "How about you two?"

"Does it really matter?" said Ambrose solemnly.

"It does to me."

"I'm a qualified diver."

"I guessed as much. And you?"

Marquez shrugged. "I can barely swim."

The diver turned to Pat who was carefully wrapping her camera and notebook in plastic. "You swim alongside me and we'll buddy-breathe by pa.s.sing the mouthpiece on my air regulator back and forth. I'll take a breath and hand it to you. You take a breath and hand it back. As soon as we drop out of this chamber, grab hold of my weight belt and hang on."

Then he turned back to Ambrose and Marquez. "Sorry to disappoint you, fellows, but if you think you're going to die, forget it. I'll be back for you in fifteen minutes."

"Please make it less." Marquez stared back from a face as gray as the granite. "The water will be over our heads in twenty minutes."

"Then I suggest you stand on tiptoe."

Taking Pat by the hand, the man from NUMA slipped beneath the water and disappeared in the murky water.

KEEPING the beam of his dive light aimed ahead in the tunnel, the diver followed one of the illuminated lines displayed on his little computer. Looking up from the tiny monitor, he aimed his dive light ahead into the tunnel and swam toward the forbidding shadows. The water had risen to the roof of the tunnel, and the surge he'd experienced earlier had fallen off. He stroked and kicked his fins mightily through the flooded cavern, dragging Pat behind him.

Stealing a quick glance backward, he saw that her eyes were tightly closed, her hands clinging to his weight belt in a death grip. The eyes never opened, even as the mouthpiece to the air regulator was pa.s.sed back and forth.

His decision to rely on a simple U.S. Divers' Scan face mask and a standard U.S. Diver's Aquarius scuba air regulator instead of his old reliable Mark II full face mask turned out to be wise. Traveling light made it easier for him to swim nearly half a mile through a maze of underground pa.s.sages from the Buccaneer Mine, many partially filled with fallen rock and timbers. There were also dry galleries the flooding water had not yet reached, where he had to crawl and walk. Trudging over ore car rails and ties and fallen rock while toting bulky air tanks, buoyancy compensator, various gauges, a knife, and a belt loaded with lead weights was not an easy ch.o.r.e. The water was icy cold, but he stayed warm inside his DUI Norseman dry suit during the pa.s.sages he was forced to swim. He had chosen the Norseman because it had greater ease of movement when he was out of the water.

The water was turbid and the beam from the dive light, cutting a swath in the liquid void, penetrated only ten feet into the murk. He counted the shoring timbers as they pa.s.sed, trying to gain a perspective on how far they had traveled. At last the tunnel made a sharp turn and ended in a gallery that led to a vertical shaft. He entered the shaft and felt as if he had been swallowed by an alien monster from the depths. Two minutes later, they broke the surface, and he aimed the dive light into the black above. A horizontal tunnel leading on to the next level of the Paradise Mine beckoned forty feet above.

Pat smoothed the hair from her face and stared wide-eyed at him. It was then he saw that her eyes were a lovely shade of olive green. "We made it," she gasped, coughing and spitting water from her mouth. "You knew about this shaft?"

Holding up the directional computer, he said, "This little gem led the way." He placed her hands on the slimy rungs of a badly rusted ladder leading upward. "Do you think you can make it up to the next level on your own?"

"I'll fly if I have to," said Pat, overjoyed at being free of the hideous chamber and knowing she was still alive, with a chance, albeit a slim one, of eventually becoming a senior citizen.

"As you climb the ladder, pull yourself up with your hands on the vertical bars, and mind you don't step in the center of the rungs. They're old and probably half rusted through. So go carefully."

"I'll make it. I wouldn't dare mess up. Not after you got me this far."

He handed her a small outdoorsman butane lighter. "Take this, find some dry wood from a timber, and start a fire. You've been exposed to the cold water much too long."

As he pulled the dive mask back down over his face and prepared to duck under that water again, her hand suddenly tightened around his wrist. She felt drawn into the opaline green eyes. "You're going back after the others?"

He nodded and threw her a smile of encouragement. "I'll get them out. Don't worry. There's still time."

"You never told me who you are."

"My name is Dirk Pitt," he said. Then, the mouthpiece reinserted, he gave a brief wave and vanished into the murky water.

THE water had reached the shoulders of the men in the ancient chamber. The terror of claustrophobia seemed to rise along with the water. All barbs of panic had receded as Ambrose and Marquez quietly accepted their fate in their private Hades deep inside the earth. Marquez chose to fight to the last breath, while Ambrose silently embraced a diehard death. He steeled himself to swim down through the cleft into the tunnel and go until his lungs gave out.

"He's not coming back, is he?" Marquez mumbled.

"Doesn't look like it, or else he won't make it in time. He probably thought it best to give us false hope."

"Funny, I had a gut feeling we could trust the guy."

"Maybe we still can," said Ambrose, seeing what looked like a glowworm approaching from under the water.

"Thank G.o.d!" gasped Marquez as the beam from the halogen dive light refracted and danced off the ceiling and walls of the chamber just before Pitt's head broke water. "You came back!"

"Was there ever a doubt?" Pitt asked lightly.

"Where is Pat?" demanded Ambrose, as Pitt's eyes met his through the plate of the dive mask.

"Safe," Pitt said briefly. "There's a dry shaft about eighty feet down the tunnel."