Area 51: The Sphinx-4 by Robert Doherty Read Free Book Online

object: to uncover the mysteries that the jungle vastness of South America have concealed for so "any centuries, We are

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    encouraged in our hops of finding the ruins of an ancient, white civilization and the degenerate offspring of a once cultivated race.

    "Who sent this?" Bauru handed it back.
    "Lieutenant Colonel Percy Fawcett, a British officer and explorer." Mualama was looking about.
    "Did he find what he was looking for?"
    "Fawcett, his son Jack, and a cameraman named Raleigh Rimell sent that telegraph on the twentieth of April, 1925, just before setting out on an expedition. They made one radio contact on the twenty-ninth of May, reporting their position, not far from here, then were never heard from or seen again."
    Bauru wasn't surprised. Many had disappeared into the jungle, particularly in this area of Brazil, the Mato GROSSO, a vast, virtually impenetrable land of jungle, escarpments, and tortuous rivers.
    "What is this city they were looking for?" Bauru asked. There were many tales about the Mato Grosso. ranging from lost cities to terrible monsters to strange tribes of white-skinned people.
    "Fawcett said he believed that people from Atlantis had come here just before the island was destroyed. That they built a mighty city in the jungle that deteriorated over the years. He claims that he found an old Portuguese map in Rio de Janeiro that showed a stone city enclosed by a wall deep in the Mato Grosso."
    "You are searching for this city?*”

    "No."
    "You ace searching for the remains of Fawcett's party?" Bauru knew that would be an impossible task— the jungle would have consumed the three men and left no trace, especially after seventy-five years.
    "No."

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    Bauru was a patient man. "Then what are we looking for?"
    "What Fawcett was really looking for." Mualama was scanning the rocky crags below them.
    Bauru was intrigued. "Not a lost city?"
    "Oh, I think Fawcett believed there was a lost Atlantean city out there somewhere in the jungle, and certainly the events of the past month with the alien Airlia confirm there was an Atlantis," Mualama said. "But on that particular expedition, he was searching for something else." Mualama pointed below. "We must go down there."
    Bauru eyed the route down with trepidation. He pulled his pack off and extracted a 120-foot nylon climbing rope. He tied one end around the thick trunk of a tree, then tossed the free end over the edge. Mualama already had a harness around his waist and a snaplink attached to the front. The African popped the rope through the gate, wrapped a loop around the metal, then prepared to back over the edge of the gorge, his left hand on the fixed end coining from his waist to the tree.
    "How will we get back up?" Bauru asked.
    "I will fasten the other end to the rock below," Mualama said. "Then we can climb back up using chumars."
    "Chumars?"
    Mualama held up two small pieces of machinery. "They clip on the rope, then allow it through in only one direction. You rest your weight on one, slide the other up, then rest your weight on the other. It is slow, but you will get back up."
    Mualama put the chumars back in his pack and edged over the side of the gorge.
    He rappelled down, his feet finding precarious purchase on the jagged rock wall, Twenty feet above the surface of the river, he paused. Mualama bent his knees, bringing his body in close to the wall, then sprung outward as he released tension on

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    the rope. The nylon slid through the snaplink as he descended, and he landed directly on top of the rock. He knelt and hammered a piton into the top of the rock before he unhooked from the rope. He tied off the free end of the rope to the piton and looked up at Bauru and gave a thumbs-up.
    Only then did he turn his attention to the stone below him. At the height of the rainy season the top would be submerged, and thousands of seasons had scoured the surface smooth. Centered on the downstream side, just before the edge, was a small mark.