Lauren and Nash went first, stepping up out of the ankle-deep water at the base of the crater and onto the path.
The group made its way up the path.
The rain was lighter here, the clouds above the great canyon thinner, allowing shafts of blue moonlight to penetrate them more easily.
Up and up they went, following the narrow curving path, all of them staring in a kind of silent awe at the magnificent rock tower in the center of the crater.
The sheer size of the tower was incredible. It was enormous. But it was curiously shaped: it was slightly wider at the top than it was at the bottom. The whole formation gradually tapered inward to the point where it met the lake at the bottom of the crater.
As they climbed higher and higher up the crater’s spiraling pathway, Race began to make out the peak of the rock tower. It was rounded in shape—domelike—and it was completely covered in dense green foliage. Gnarled, waterlogged branches leaned out from its edges, unfazed by the vertiginous three-hundred-foot drop beneath them.
The group was nearing the top of the crater when they came to a bridge—or rather the makings of a bridge that connected the outer, spiraling path to the rock tower.
It was situated just below the lip of the canyon, not far from the thin waterfall that cascaded out over the rim and plummeted down the western wall of the canyon.
Two flat stone ledges faced each other on opposite sides of the chasm, a hundred feet apart. On each ledge sat a pair of stone buttresses, presumably the foundations from which a rope bridge of some kind once hung.
The two buttresses on Race’s side of the chasm were pitted and worn but they looked sturdy beyond belief. And they looked old. Really, really old. Race had no doubt that they easily dated back to Incan times.
It was then that he saw the rope bridge itself.
It was hanging from the ledge on the other side of the chasm, the tower side. It hung vertically from the two buttresses on the far ledge so that it fell flat against the tower’s rocky wall. Attached to the bottom end of the rope bridge, however, was a long length of frayed yellow rope that drooped in a wide arc across the chasm, over to Race’s ledge, where it had been tied to one of the buttresses.
Walter Chambers examined the frayed yellow rope. “Dried grass rope. Interlocking braid formation. This is classic Incan rope construction. It was said that a whole Incan town, working together, could build an entire rope bridge in three days. The women picked the grass and braided it into long thin lengths of string. Then the men braided those lengths of string into thicker, more sturdy segments of rope like this.”
“But a rope bridge couldn’t possibly survive the elements for four hundred years,” Race said.
“No . . . No, it couldn’t,” Chambers said.
“Which means somebody else built this bridge,” Lauren said. “And recently, too.”
“But why the elaborate set-up?” Race said, indicating the length of rope that stretched out across the ravine to the lowest point of the rope bridge. “Why attach a rope to this end of the bridge and drop the whole thing down on the other side?”
“I don’t know,” Chambers said. “You’d only do something like that if you wanted to keep something trapped on the tower top . . .”
Nash turned to Lauren. “What do you think?”
Lauren peered over at the tower, partially obscured by the veil of lightly falling rain.
“It’s high enough to match the angle on the NRI,” she looked at her digital compass. “And we’re exactly 632 meters horizontally from the village. Factoring in the elevation, I’d say it’s a good bet the idol’s over there.”
Van Lewen and Cochrane hauled the rope bridge up and looped its ends around the two stone buttresses on their side of the ravine. Now the great swooping rope bridge spanned the chasm, linking the sky scraper like rock tower to the spiraling path that ran around it.
The rain continued to fall.
Jagged forks of brilliant white lightning began to illuminate the sky.
“Sergeant,” Captain Scott said. “Safety rope.”
Van Lewen immediately brought a strange-looking object out from his backpack. It was a shiny silver grappling hook of some sort. Attached to it was a coil of black nylon rope.
The tall sergeant quickly jammed the shaft of the grappling hook into the M-203 grenade launcher attached to the barrel of his M-16. Then he aimed his gun across the chasm and fired.
With a gaseous shoosh! the grappling hook shot out from Van Lewen’s grenade launcher and arced gracefully over the chasm, its sharp silver claws snapping out into position as it flew, its black rope wobbling through the air behind it.
The hook landed on the tower top on the other side of the chasm and dug its claws into the base of a thick tree there. Van Lewen then secured his end of the rope to one of the stone buttresses on their side of the chasm so that now the nylon rope spanned the gorge just above the drooping suspension bridge.
“All right, everyone,” Scott said, “keep one hand on the safety rope as you cross the bridge. If the bridge drops from under you, the rope will keep you from falling.”
Van Lewen must have seen Race go pale. “You’ll be all right. Just keep a hold of that rope and you’ll make it.”
The Green Berets went first, one at a time.
The narrow rope bridge rocked and swayed beneath their weight as they walked, but it held. The rest of the group followed behind them, holding onto the nylon safety rope as they crossed the long swooping suspension bridge in the constant subtropical rain.
Race crossed the rope bridge last of all, holding onto the safety rope so hard his knuckles went white. As such, he crossed the bridge more slowly than the others, so by the time he stepped onto the ledge on the other side, they had already gone on ahead and all he saw was a damp stone stairway leading up into the foliage. He hurried up it after them.
Dripping green leaves crowded in on either side of him. Wet fern fronds slapped against his face as he climbed the watersoaked stone slabs after the others. After about thirty seconds of climbing, he burst through a large set of branches and found himself standing in a small clearing of some sort.
Everyone else was already there. But they just stood there, motionless. At first Race didn’t know what had made them stop, but then he saw that they all had their flashlights pointed up and to the left.
His gaze followed their flashlight beams and he saw it.
“Holy Christ,” he breathed.
There, situated on the highest point of the rock tower—covered in hard-packed mud and moss, concealed by weeds all around it, and glistening wet in the ever-falling rain—stood an ominous stone structure.
It was cloaked in shadow and wetness, but it was clear that this was a structure that had been designed to exude menace and power. A structure that could have had no other purpose than to inspire fear, idolatry and worship.
It was a temple.
Race stared at the dark stone temple and swallowed hard.
It looked evil.
Cold and cruel and evil.
It wasn’t a very big structure. In fact, it was barely even one story tall. But Race knew that wasn’t really the case.
He guessed what they were seeing was only the very top of the temple—the tip of the iceberg—because the ruined section of it that they now saw finished too abruptly. It just disappeared into the mud beneath their feet.
Race presumed that the rest of the enormous structure lay buried in the mud beneath them, consumed by four hundred years of accumulated wet earth.
What he saw, however, was frightening enough.
The temple was roughly pyramidal in shape—two wide stone steps led up to a small cube-like structure that was no larger than the average garage. He had an idea what the cube-shaped structure was—it was a tabernacle of some sort, a holy chamber not unlike those found atop Aztec or Mayan pyramids.
A series of gruesome pictographs had been carved into the walls of the tabernacle—snarling catlike monsters wiel
ding scythe-like claws; dying humans screaming in agony. Cracks of age littered the stone walls of the temple. The unending subtropical rain ran in rivulets down its carved stone walls, giving life to the characters in the horrific scenes on the walls—generating the same effect that running water had produced on the stone totem earlier.
In the center of the tabernacle, however, lay the most intriguing aspect of the whole structure—an entrance of some kind. A square-shaped portal.
But this portal had been stopped up. At some time in the distant past someone had wedged an enormous boulder into it, blocking it. The boulder was absolutely huge. Race guessed that it must have taken at least ten men to move it into place.
“Definitely pre-Incan,” Chambers said, as he examined the carvings.
“Yes, absolutely,” Lopez said.
“How do you know?” Nash asked.
“Pictographs are too closely spaced,” Chambers said.
“And much too detailed,” Lopez said.
Nash turned to Captain Scott. “Check on Reichart back at the village.”
“Yes, sir,” Scott stepped away from the circle and pulled a portable radio from his pack.
Lopez and Chambers were still talking shop.
“What do you think?” Lopez said. “Chachapoyan?”
“Possibly,” Chambers said. “Could be Moche. Look at the feline images.”
Gaby Lopez cocked her head doubtfully. “It could be, but that would make it nearly a thousand years old.”
“Then what about the spiraling path around the crater and the stairs here on the tower?” Chambers said.
“Yes . . . yes, I know. Very peculiar.”
Nash cut in. “I’m glad you both find it so fascinating, but what the hell are you talking about?”
“Well,” Chambers said, “it appears that we have a slight anomaly here, Colonel.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you see, the spiraling path that runs around this crater and the steps on this tower were without a doubt constructed by Incan engineers. The Incans built all sorts of tracks and trails through the Andes and their construction methods are well documented. These two examples bear all the hallmarks of Incan trail construction.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that the path and the steps were constructed roughly four hundred years ago. This temple, on the other hand, was built long before then.”
“So?” Nash said irritably.
“So, that’s the anomaly,” Chambers said. “Why would the Incans construct a pathway to a temple that they didn’t even build?”
“And don’t forget the rope bridge,” Lopez said.
“No,” Chambers said. “Quite right. Quite right.” The bookish little scientist looked up fearfully at the rim of the crater. “I would suggest we hurry.”
“Why?” Nash said.
“Because, Colonel, it is highly likely that there exists in this area a tribe of natives who will probably not take too kindly to the fact that we have intruded upon their sacred site.”
“How do you know that?” Nash said quickly. “How do you know that there are natives around here?”
“Because,” Chambers said, “they are the ones who built the rope bridge.”
“As Professor Race pointed out earlier,” Chambers explained, “suspension bridges made out of rope decay very quickly over time. A grass-based rope bridge will disintegrate, say, within a few years of its being built. The bridge that we crossed to get to this temple could not have existed four hundred years ago. It was built recently, by someone knowledgeable in Incan bridge-building methods, in all likelihood a primitive tribe of some sort through whom this knowledge has been passed down through the generations.”
Nash groaned audibly.
“A primitive tribe,” Race said flatly. “Here. Now?”
“It’s not that improbable,” Gaby Lopez said. “Lost tribes are discovered all the time in the Amazon Basin. As recently as 1987, the Villas Boas brothers made contact with the lost Kreen Akrore tribe in the Brazilian rainforests. Hell, the Brazilian government even has a policy of sending explorers into the jungle to make contact with Stone Age tribes.
“As you can imagine, though, a lot of those primitive tribes are extremely hostile to Europeans. It is not unknown for state-sponsored explorers to come home in pieces. Some, like the famous Peruvian anthropologist Dr. Miguel Moros Marquez, don’t come back at all—”
“Hey!” Lauren said suddenly from over by the portal.
Everyone turned. Lauren was standing in front of the boulder that was wedged inside the square-shaped doorway. “There’s something written on this.”
Race and the others came over to where she was standing. Lauren brushed away some chunks of mud that clung to the boulder and Race saw what she was looking at
Something was engraved in the surface of the great stone.
Lauren scraped away some more mud, revealing something that looked like a letter from the alphabet.
It was an “N.”
“What the hen . . . ?” Nash said.
Words began to take shape.
No entrare . . .
Race recognized them.
“No entrare” was Spanish for “Do not enter.”
Lauren scraped away some more mud and a whole sentence appeared in the center of the boulder, crudely scratched into the surface of the stone. It read:
No entrare absolute.
Muerte asomarse dentro.
AS
Race translated the words in his head. Then he swallowed hard.
“What does it say?” Nash said.
Race turned to face him. At first, he didn’t say anything. Then at last he said, “It says, ‘Do not enter at any cost. Death lies within.’”
“What does ‘AS’ mean?” Lauren said.
“I would guess,” Race said, “that ‘AS’ stands for Alberto Santiago.”
Back in the village, Doogie Kennedy kicked away a loose rock restlessly. It was dark now and the rain was still falling and he was pissed at having been left back in the village when he really wanted to be up in the mountains with the others.
“What’s the matter, Doogs?” Staff Sergeant George ‘Tex” Reichart asked from over by the moat on the eastern side of the village. Reichart was a tall, lanky beanpole of a man. He hailed from Austin and was a genuine, grass-chewing cowboy—hence his nickname. “Not getting’ enough action?”
“I’m awright,” Doogie said. “I’d just rather be up there in them mountains findin’ whatever it is we’re here to find, than down here babysitting a goddamned village.”
Reichart chuckled softly to himself. Doogie was good value. A bit on the dim side, but keen—keen as mustard.
What Tex Reichart didn’t know, however, was that behind his small-town Southern drawl, Doogie Kennedy was in fact an exceptionally intelligent young man.
Preliminary testing at Fort Benning had revealed that Doogie had an IQ of 161—which was odd, because he had only just barely graduated high school.
It was soon discovered that, throughout his school years in Little Rock, Arkansas, young Douglas Kennedy’s quiet, God-fearing accountant father had beaten him senseless every evening with a leather strap.
Kennedy Sr. had also refused to buy schoolbooks for his son and on most nights he would make the boy stand in a dark, three-by-four-foot closet as punishment for serious misdemeanors such as slamming the door too loudly or overcooking his father’s steak. Homework never got done and young Doogie only managed to complete high school through his extraordinary ability to take in mentally what was said in class.
He joined the Army the day he graduated and he would never return home. What school administrators had seen as just another shy young kid scraping through high school, one sharp old recruiting sergeant had seen as the mark of a determined and brilliant mind.
Doogie was still shy, but given his intelligence, his willpower and the support network of the Army, he soon became a hell of a soldier. He swiftly m
ade Ranger grade, majoring in sniping. The Green Berets and Fort Bragg had followed soon after.
“Guess I’m just itchin’ for some action,” Doogie said, as he came over to where Reichart was laying an AC-7V “Eagle Eye” sensor by the eastern moat
“I wouldn’t go getting your hopes up,” Reichart said, flicking on the Eagle Eye’s motion-activated thermal-imaging system. “I don’t think there’s gonna be much excitement on this trip—”
There came a loud beep from the motion sensor.
Doogie and Reichart exchanged a quick look.
Then both of them snapped around to scan the dense section of rainforest in front of the motion sensor.
There was nothing there.
Just a tangle of crisscrossing fern fronds and empty forest. Somewhere nearby a bird whistled.
Doogie snatched up his M-16 and cautiously stepped over the log-bridge that snapped the eastern section of the moat. He moved slowly forward, toward the suspect section of jungle.
He reached the edge of the rainforest, flicked on his barrel-mounted flashlight—
—and he saw it.
Saw the glistening, speckled body of the largest snake he had ever seen in his life! It was a thirty-foot anaconda, a monster of a snake, slinking lazily around the gnarled branches of an Amazonian tree.
It was so large, Doogie figured, that its movement must have set off the motion sensor.
“What is it?” Reichart said, coming alongside him.
“It’s nothing,” Doogie said. “Just a sna—”
And then abruptly, Doogie whirled back around to face the snake.
The snake couldn’t have set off the motion sensor. It was cold-blooded and the motion sensor operated on a thermal-imaging system. It relied on picking up heat signatures—
Doogie whipped his gun up again and played his flashlight beam over the forest floor in front of him.
And he froze.
A man lay in the wet brush in front of him.
He was lying flat on his belly—looking up at Doogie through a black porcelain hockey mask—not ten yards away. So good was his camouflage, he was barely distinguishable from the dark foliage around him.
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