“And you hope to do that?”

“Who knows what answers may be found here?”

Miyuki gave her a crooked grin and pushed up. “There is only one way to find out.”

Karen shoved to her feet, matching her friend’s grin. “I should say so.”

The pair continued their climb, staying together, each helping the other up the high steps. In twenty minutes, with the sun climbing higher, they reached the summit. Karen scrambled up first, breathing heavily.

The plateau was a single monstrous slab. A long crack traversed the surface, but the split was clearly due to more recent damage, most likely from the seismic activity. Karen guessed that when the pyramid was built, the slab must have been lifted intact atop this structure. She slowly turned. Ten meters on each side, she estimated. The meter-thick slab had to weigh hundreds of tons. How did these ancient builders get it up here?

Miyuki clambered up behind her, then turned in a slow circle, appreciating the view, her eyes shining. “Simply amazing.”

Karen nodded, too awestruck to speak yet. She crossed to the tumbled temple in the center of the roof. It had once been constructed of slabs and basalt logs. She could imagine how it must have looked. A squat, low building surmounted by a slab roof. She edged around it, viewing it from all angles.

Miyuki dogged her steps, video camera in hand.

Karen examined the temple. It was unadorned. Or perhaps any decorative carving had been worn away long ago. She straightened. “I’m going in.”

“What?” Miyuki lowered her camera. “What are you talking about?”

Karen pointed to a pair of wall slabs that had fallen and were tilting against each other. A narrow crawl space lay between them, descending at a slant.

“Are you crazy? You don’t know how stable those stones are!”

Karen chipped some coral that had taken root between the two slabs. Like living cement. “For coral to grow here, it means they haven’t moved in ages. Besides, I’m just going to take a quick peek. If there’s any carving or petroglyphs, they’ll be inside. Sheltered from erosion.” She slipped out of her embroidered jacket and dropped to her knees. “It’s gonna be a tight squeeze.”

She yanked off her belt so the buckle wouldn’t snag, then shrugged out of her shoulder harness, lowering her holstered pistol to the stones.

“Is that penlight still in your bag?” she asked.

Miyuki shuffled through her pack and pulled out a tiny fluorescent purple flashlight. Karen took it, twisted it on, then put the handle in her mouth as she lay flat on her belly.

“Are you sure you should do this?”

As answer, Karen snuggled into the hole head first, penlight pointed forward. Worming her way inside, she used her fingers to find imperfections in the rock to help pull her forward, but mostly it was her toes that edged her inch by inch into the crawlway. She ignored the thick slabs hanging over her. She had done some caving in her past, but nothing this tight. She kept her breathing calm, told herself to just keep moving, don’t stop.

“There go your feet!” Miyuki called to her.

Her friend’s voice was muffled. Karen’s body fit snugly within the tunnel. She found it harder to breathe with the walls compressing her chest. An edge of panic set in, but she bit it back. She took quicker, shallower breaths. She would not suffocate.

She moved on. If she became stuck, she could always use her hands to propel her backward, plus Miyuki could pull her by the ankles. There was no real danger here. Still, her mouth grew dry and sticky as her toes began to slip on the damp stone.

“How you doing?”

Karen opened her mouth to answer and realized she did not have enough air to yell back to her friend. “I’m okay.” It came out in a gasped whisper around the flashlight held in her teeth.

“What was that?”

Karen stretched her arms forward. The fingers of her right hand just caught the edge of the slab’s end. The end was that close! She locked her fingers and pulled, shoving with her toes at the same time. Her body thrust forward. By now her pulse pounded in her ears. Her jaw ached from biting on the metal penlight. “C’mon, goddamnit!” she swore in a short gasp.

Fingers scrambling, she found a purchase for her left hand, too. Grinning, she heaved her body forward, pulling her head free of the tunnel. She paused to crane her neck around, the beam of light casting back and forth.

A cramped space lay open here. No bigger than a half bath. But what caught her eye was what looked like an altar on the far side. Barnacle-covered urns and broken pottery lay scattered about the floor, all frosted with algae. Around the edge of the altar wove a carved snake. Karen followed it with her light until she reached the serpent’s nose. A mane of stone feathers surrounded its fanged head. Its eyes, red stones, reflected back her light. Most likely rubies.

Ignoring the jewels, she moved the light, more excited by the representation of feathers. It reminded her of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered snake god of the Mayas. Could this be a sign that the Mayas had built this site?

She spat out the penlight. Twisting and using her arms as leverage, she hauled herself out of the damp tunnel and into the chamber. Recovering her flashlight, she turned to the entrance. Miyuki should see this.

Karen bent by the tunnel as a shot rang out.

The sharp blast echoed in the small space, followed by a terrified scream.

Karen dropped to her knees, trying to peer down the tunnel. “Miyuki!”

For the first time in over twelve years, Jack placed his foot aboard a United States military vessel — and it was no small tugboat. He stepped from the Sea Knight helicopter onto almost an acre of open flight deck. The USS Gibraltar was two football fields long and half a field wide, a monstrous beast powered by two boilers. Up and down the flight deck, huge painted numbers signaled, landing pads for up to nine aircraft.

Ducking his head, he strode from under the helicopter’s rotors. Overhead, the roar of the blades was deafening. The rotorwash tore at his unzippered jacket. As he cleared the blades, he almost tripped over one of the many aircraft tie-downs. He caught himself, feeling foolish. A rookie’s mistake. It truly had been a long time since he walked this deck.

Past the deadly blades, Jack straightened and glanced out to sea. Near the horizon, he could just make out the tiny dot that was the Deep Fathom. He had been flown here for an organizational briefing due to start at noon. Closer to the huge ship, flanking its two sides, were three smaller destroyers, support ships for the mighty behemoth.

Jack scowled at the sight. Talk about overkill. At least the Vice President hadn’t deployed an entire goddamn battle group.

Turning, Jack eyed the bristling array of weapons systems near the Gibraltar’s superstructure. With that much firepower, he thought, who needed an entire battle group? The Gibraltar could probably take over a small country by itself. Its air contingent consisted of forty-two Sea Knight helicopters, five Harrier attack planes, and six ASW helicopters. Additionally, the vessel bore its own defenses: Sea Sparrow surface-to-air missile systems, Phalanx Close-in Weapons System, Bushmaster cannons, even a Nixie torpedo-decoy system. All in all, one hell of a big stick to shake at the enemies of the United States.

Motors whined on his left. A portside elevator lifted another Sea Knight helicopter from the hangar below. Men and women in red and yellow jackets buzzed around the deck. With the large ship approaching ground zero of the crash site, the great beast was stirring.