You wait a few seconds, making sure the two men are gone for good, and pick up your paddles. As you srike out from shore you look ahead just in time to see the manhole-hatchway thing sink beneath the surface, leaving a ring of ripples and a few bubbles floating on the surface. You speed across the river, stopping at the spot where the last ripple fades. A careful look and a few taps with the end of a paddle assure you that the whole episode was indeed not a dream. You send your second in command, Bernie, on a diving mission. He steps out of the canoe, reaches into the water and begins to examine.

What looked like a manhole-like structure with a submarine hatch for a lid turns out to be a manhole-like stucture with - you guessed it! - a submarine hatch for a cover. And there on one side of it is a big red button. Bernie presses it and, to the sound of a low electric hum, the device begins to slowly rise until it's top is again just inches above the water line. To your surprise it is not locked in any way. Good luck, or good script writing? In any case you lift the lid and climb quicky down the strips of re-bar that serve as a ladder.

You enter a system of man-made caverns lit by flourescent tubes. The caverns are straight sided, with ceilings just high enough to let you walk upright. A plastic pipe, about 10cm in diameter runs along the center of the ceiling of each passageway. At regular intervals smaller pipes connect to it and pass upward through the ceiling. You realise that you must be walking underneath the river bed and that these pipes must push upwards into that river bed. You reach up and grasp one. It is cold and wet with condensation.

A few minutes of investigation and you begin to have a sense of the extent of these passageways. You can visualize a series of tunnels running parallel to each other across the river bed. Each has a pipe. They are connected near each bank of the river with the pipes also connecting and leading away on what you feel must be the south side of the river.

It doesn't take a lot of brains (fortunately) to figure out that someone has developed an elaborate system of secretly draining water from the river. Grand theft H2O ! You have figured out how. But who? Why?

You are pondering these and other questions when you hear a sound that strikes fear into your heart. No it's not a police siren. Worse.

By listening carefully you should be able to stay a step ahead of these vistors until they do what they have to do and leave again. On the other hand if you were to overpower them in some way you would be heroes. Assuming of course that they are indeed water thieves and not merely government engineers working on on some conservation project that just hasn't made the news yet.