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Sam nodded. “We can handle it without the workers. We’ve got some small experience with this kind of thing,” he pointed out.
“Very well,” Antonio said. He had a quiet discussion with the foreman, who stood like a supplicant, straw hat in his hand. The crew scrambled up the ladder, taking their shovels with them. Sam studied the stone surface and then raised his gaze to the darkening sky.
“Can we get a few of those work lights turned on?” Lazlo asked.
“Of course,” Maribela said. She quickly ascended the rungs to ground level and spoke with the foreman, who was talking to the security guards.
Sam called up from the excavation, “Oh, and we’ll need flashlights, pry bars, and rope.”
Ten minutes later, they were feeling along the mortar seams of the large stone bricks that formed the structure’s roof, looking for a way to work one loose. Antonio called out from his position at the edge a
nd they moved to where he stood, looking down.
“Think you can get one of the bars in that?” he asked, pointing to a gap in the joint—a crack running around the stone where time had degraded the mortar.
Remi slipped her bar into it. “Sam? Try to get yours in, too.”
Sam joined her, but the fissure was too tight. He began scraping the mortar with the sharp edge of his tool, and in a half hour the stone was loose enough to shift. Lazlo joined them, and Antonio got his crowbar into the crack as well, and between the four of them they worked the stone from its setting, leaving a two-foot gap, the darkness below inky and damp. Remi directed her flashlight beam into the cavity, which swallowed the light like viscous mud. She squinted, trying to make anything out.
“Get the rope. I’ll drop down inside and look around.”
Sam shook his head. “No. I’ll go.”
“You think you can fit through that? It’ll be tight.”
“I work out.”
“Lately, by lifting tequila and enchiladas. But if you think you can make it . . .” Remi teased as Antonio uncoiled the nylon cord.
Antonio handed Sam one end. “There might be snakes. Many in this region are quite poisonous, as are the scorpions and spiders. We might want to wait until morning. I can get a fiber-optic scope from my associate in the tunnel dig, and perhaps one of his robots to explore the chamber.”
Sam grinned. “And lose out on all the glory? No chance. I live for this kind of thing.”
“But the snakes . . .” Maribela cautioned.
“I eat ’em for breakfast.”
“Hopefully, none of them have the same idea about you, old boy,” Lazlo said.
Remi rolled her eyes as Sam wound the rope twice around his waist. “Tie this to something up top that will support my weight—one of the vehicle bumpers would work. I’ll lower myself until I’m inside. Then I’ll let out rope. Slowly. If I’m screaming in pain, that would be a good signal to pull me up and get some antivenom ready.”
“We don’t have any antivenom,” Antonio said.
“No plan’s perfect. But the ‘If I’m screaming . . . pull me up’ part’s still a good one.”
Remi took his hand. “Be careful, Tarzan.”
“I’d do the jungle call, but it might scare the snakes.”
“And horrify the bystanders. As well as your wife,” Lazlo said.
Antonio carried the rope up to ground level and returned a few minutes later. “You’re secure.”
“‘All right,’ as Evel Knievel used to say, ‘here goes nothing.’”
“Five bucks says he never said that,” Remi countered.
“Under his breath.”