“What do you think?” Juan asked quietly.

“Looks like this plane’s been here awhile,” Jerry said, swatting at a mouse-sized bug that had landed on his neck.

Mark’s expression was thoughtful for a moment, and then his eyes widened. “This isn’t a plane,” he said with awe in his voice. “This is the Flying Dutchman.”

“Forgive my ignorance, but wasn’t the Dutchman a ghost ship?” Pulaski replied.

“The Flying Dutchman was a blimp,” Mark told him, and pointed. “Look between the seats. See that big wheel. That’s for controlling a blimp’s pitch. Rotate it forward, it engages the elevator on the fin assembly, and she goes nose down. Move it back, and the nose rises.”

“What makes you think this is the Flying Dutchman and not some lost Navy patrol from World War Two?”

“Because we’re a thousand miles inland from both the Atlantic and the Pacific, and the Flying Dutchman went missing while looking for a lost city in the jungle.”

“Okay,” Juan said. “Go back and tell it from the beginning.”

Mark couldn’t tear his eyes off the airship’s shattered gondola. “When I was a kid, I kind of had a thing for blimps and zeppelins. It was just a fad, you know, a hobby. Before that, it was locomotives from the Steam Age.” Seeing the expressions staring at him, he added, “Look, I admit it. I was a geek.”

“Was?” Jerry deadpanned.

“Anyway, I read a lot of books about airships, their history. Like the story of the L-8, a Navy patrol blimp that took off from San Francisco in August of 1942. A couple of hours into a routine patrol, the two-man crew reported seeing an oil slick. A couple hours after that, the blimp floated back over the coast, minus the men. The only clue was that two life jackets were missing.”

“What’s that got to do with this?” Juan asked a little impatiently. Mark Murphy was the smartest guy Cabrillo had ever met, but with that came his tendency to go off on tangents that highlighted his near-photographic memory.

“Well, another lost-blimp story is the Flying Dutchman. I hope I am remembering this right. After the war, a former Navy blimp pilot and some of his buddies bought a surplus airship to use as an aerial platform to fly over the South American jungle in search of an Incan city, most likely El Dorado. They converted the blimp to fly on hydrogen, which is insanely explosive, but it was something they could make themselves using electrolysis.

“Treasure hunters?” Pulaski asked dubiously.

“I didn’t say they were right,” Mark replied on the defensive. “I’m only saying they were real.”

“This is all well and good,” Cabrillo said, backing away from the ruined cockpit and its grisly occupant. “I’ve marked the location on the GPS, but we’ve got a mission to perform.”

“Give me five minutes,” Mark pleaded.

Juan thought for a second. Nodded.

Murph grinned his thanks. He crawled through the opening where the gondola’s door had been ripped off when the airship crashed into the jungle. To his left were the two pilots’ seats and controls. To the right was the cabin proper. It had the neat economy and efficiency of a travel trailer. There were two bunk beds, a tiny galley with an electric burner, and a dozen storage lockers. He opened each in turn, rummaged around for any clues, and moved on when all he found were clots of mildew and mold or old surplus mess kits the men must have used to make their meals.