The effect was what he expected, what he'd hoped. The gorilla of a man went stiff as a tree and clamped a hand to his eye. In the process, he blindly caught hold of Pitt's hand and slowly, relentlessly began to bend the index and middle fingers backward. The pain shot through Pitt like a shaft of lightning. The agony of having the bones of the fingers snapped is unlike any other. Excruciating doesn't do justice as a description. Pitt began to see fireworks behind his eyes. He was within a microsecond of releasing his stranglehold and clutching at the hand that was causing him so much torment, when he sensed an infinitesimal drop in pressure. The pain was still there, but lessening by tiny degrees.

Slowly, almost too slowly, the stabbing pain began to subside as the giant started sucking water in through his open mouth. His movements became uncoordinated and spasmodic. He entered the initial stages of blackout as he began to drown. His face suddenly contorted in fear and panic. Pitt waited several seconds after the big man went limp before he replaced the mouthpiece, forcing air down his victim's throat and lungs.

Giordino came halfway through the hole. "What took you so long?"

"The luck of the draw," Pitt gasped between breaths, his heart pounding like a piston inside a cylinder. "I always choose the wrong lane of traffic, the wrong line to stand in at the bank and the biggest guy in the world to pick a fight with. What about your man?"

"I wrapped him tighter than a silkworm with electrical cord I found on a string of overhead lights." Giordino looked down at the inert form on the floor of the chamber, and the eyes behind the dive mask widened. He stared at Pitt with growing respect. "Do the coaches of the National Football League know about this guy?"

"If they did, he'd be a number-one draft choice," Pitt said, as his heart began to slow and his breath came evenly. "Take their knives and any other weapons you can find. Then find some more electrical cable and let's bind him before he comes around and tears the mountain down. Leave their dive masks off so their vision is blurred."

Giordino hog-tied the giant diver with electrical cord and dropped him none too gently through the opening into the cleft below. He then removed one or two weights from the belts of both men, so their bodies were slightly buoyant, which made their mass easier to tow back through the tunnel. He also removed their dive knives. On the smaller man, he found a little gun that shot a shaft with a barb on one end. The shaft was propelled by compressed air from a tiny cylinder.

While Giordino was concentrating on their prisoners, Pitt removed a large nylon net bag from his weight belt and opened the metal clasp at the top. He stared at the sinister black skull that seemed to stare back through empty eye sockets. He could not help but wonder if a curse came with the skull. What cryptic secrets did it hold?

Pitt's idealistic nature was overpowered by his practical side. Though he was a daydreamer, he did not buy into myths and folktale. If an object or conception could not be seen, felt, or experienced, it did not exist for him. If he wasn't already a hundred and eighty feet under water, he would have spat in the eye of the obsidian skull. But because it was a link in a chain of enigmas, he was determined to place it in the hands of people who could properly study it.

"Sorry, my friend," he murmured so softly that Giordino didn't hear him, "but it's time you revealed yourself." He lifted the skull very carefully from its pedestal and slid it into the carry bag. At this depth he handled it easily, but once it carne out of the water, he guessed it would weigh a solid forty pounds. He took one final look at the chamber, the inscriptions on the walls, the still-burning floodlights lying on the floor where they had been hurled during the struggle. Then he dove headfirst through the hole in the rock, mindful not to knock the skull against the rock and shatter it. Giordino had already pulled the two divers into the tunnel. The giant of a man had regained consciousness and was struggling violently to break free of the electrical cord that bound his ankles and pinned his arms tightly against his immense body.

"Need a hand?" Pitt asked.

"You carry the skull and the bag with the cameras. I'll tote the refuse."

"Best if you go first and I follow. That way I can watch them every inch of the way in case Big Boy starts breaking loose."

Giordino handed him the little gun with the barb. "Shoot him in his Adam's apple if he so much as wiggles a finger."

"We'll have to be very careful in our decompression stops. We may not have enough air for the four of us."

Giordino made an indifferent motion with his hands. "Sorry, I'm not in a sacrificial mood."

The return went slowly. Giordino made better time dragging the two divers and their breathing gear by walking over the ore track ties than trying to swim his way back to the shaft. Precious air was lost during the prolonged passage. Pitt kept a close eye on his air gauge- he knew that his air was seriously depleted. The gauge read just three hundred pounds. He and Giordino had used twice the amount of air they had computed before the dive, not having counted on a fight with intruders.

He curled his body and kicked around to the side of the bound divers, checking their air gauges. Both men had nearly seven hundred pounds. They must have found a shorter route through the mine to the chamber, Pitt surmised. After what seemed a year and a day, they finally reached the vertical shaft and rose to the first decompression stop. Sheriff Eagan and Luis Marquez had lowered two spare tanks on nylon line to the precise depth Giordino had calculated earlier.

Keeping a tight eye on his decompression computer, Giordino listened as Pitt read off the air pressure remaining in each tank. Only when they went beyond the safety level did he unstrap and push them aside. The prisoners did not become belligerent. They'd come to realize that to resist was to die. But Pitt didn't let down his guard for a second. He knew well they were two ticking time bombs, waiting to explode at the first opportunity that presented itself for them to escape.

Time passed as if mired in glue. They used up the last of their air and went on the reserve tanks. When the prisoner's tanks were dry, Pitt and Giordino began to buddy-breathe with them, exchanging their mouthpieces between breaths. After the prescribed wait, they lazily swam up to the next decompression stop.

They were scraping the bottom of the reserve tanks when Giordino finally gave the "surface" sign and said, "The party's over. We can go home now."

Pitt climbed the rope ladder thrown into the shaft by Marquez. He reached the rim of the tunnel floor and handed Sheriff Eagan his air tanks. Then he passed up the skull and camera bag. Next, Eagan took Pitt's outstretched hand and helped him onto firm rock. Pitt rolled over on his back, removed his full face mask, and lay there for a minute, thankfully breathing in the cool damp air of the mine.

"Welcome home," said Eagan. "What took you so long? You were due back twenty minutes ago."

"We ran into two more candidates for your jail."

Giordino surfaced, climbed up, and then knelt on his hands and knees before hauling the smaller prisoner into the tunnel. "I'll need help with the other," he said, lifting his face mask. "He weighs two of me put together."

Three minutes later, Eagan was standing over the intruders, questioning them. But they glared menacingly at him and said nothing. Pitt dropped to his knees and removed the dive hood covering the smaller man's head and chin.