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In her late thirties, Dr Kelsey had enjoyed a ten-year fascination with the Chachapoyan cultures She had explored and surveyed iical sites on five previous expeditions, clearing the invading plant growth froion's ancient cities As a respected archaeologist of Andes culture, following in the footsteps of a glorious past was her, great passion To here an enigmatic and obscure people had flourished and died was a dreay Department of Arizona State University

"Useless to carry a video camera unless the visibility opens up below the first twothe project

"Then shoot stills," Shannon said firmly "I want every dive recorded whether we can see past our noses or not"

A year shy of forty and sporting luxuriant black hair and a beard, Rodgers was an old pro at underwater photography He was in demand by all the major science and travel publications to shoot below-the-sea photos of fish and coral reefs His extraordinary pictures of World War II shipwrecks in the South Pacific and ancient subhout the Mediterranean had won him numerous awards and the respect of his peers

A tall, slender ray beard that covered half his face, held up Shannon's air tank so she could slip her arh the straps of the backpack "I wish you'd put a hold on this until we've finished constructing the dive raft"

"That's two days away By doing a preliet a head start"

"Then at least wait for the rest of the dive teaet into trouble, we have no backup"

"Not to worry," Shannon said gamely "Miles and I will only do a bounce dive to test depth and water conditions We won't run our dive time past thirty minutes"

"And no deeper than fifteen meters," the older man cautioned her

Shannon sue, Dr Steve Miller from the University of Pennsylvania "And if we haven't touched bottom at fifteen meters?"

"We've got five weeks No need to get antsy and risk an accident" Miller's voice was quiet and deep, but there was a noticeable trace of concern in it One of the leading anthropologists of his ti the ions of

the Andes and spilled down to the jungles of the Amazon "Play it safe, y of the pool walls, then get back to the surface"

Shannon nodded and spit into her facethe saliva around the inside of the lens to keep it fro Next she rinsed theher buoyancy coers made a final check of each other's equipital dive corammed, Shannon smiled at Miller

"See you soon, Doc Keep a martini on ice"

The anthropologist looped under their arripped tightly by a tearaduate students of the university's archaeology program, who had volunteered to join the project "Loay, kids," Miller ordered the six boys and four girls