“The local people have a name for the beast that comes in the night to kill without mercy, a name which has been passed down from generation to generation. They call it the rapa.”
Krauss looked at Race closely. “We should heed this local folklore very carefully, because it can be of great use to us in evaluating our enemy.”
“How?”
“Well, for one thing, we can use it to discern certain things about our feline antagonists.”
“Like what?”
“Well, first of all, we can safely assume that the rapa is nocturnal. The remains of local men are found only in the morning. And we know from our own experience that these cats flee from the morning light. Ergo, they are nocturnal. They hunt only at night and retire for the main part of the day.”
“If they’ve been shut up inside that temple for generations,” Race said, “how could they have survived? What have they been eating?”
“That I do not know,” Krauss said, frowning seriously, as if he were pondering a troublesome mathematical equation.
Race looked up at the mountain-plateau that housed the mysterious temple. A veil of slanting rain covered its rocky eastern face.
“So what are they doing now?” he said.
“Sleeping, I imagine,” Krauss said, “in the safety of their temple. Which is why now is the best time to send our men in to get that idol.”
Scott, Wilson and Graf emerged from the narrow passageway and stepped out into the pool of shallow water at the base of the magnificent crater.
It was unusually dark in the canyon. Any light that there was had been blocked out by the thick rain clouds in the sky and the dense canopy of trees that overhung the crater’s rim. Every fissure and crack in the canyon’s walls was cloaked in shadow.
Scott and Wilson walked in front. Thin beams of light shot out from the small flashlights attached to the barrels of their M-16s.
“All right—” Scott said into his throat mike.
“—we’re heading up the path now,” his voice said over the monitor’s speakers.
Race watched tensely as, on the screen, Scott, Wilson and Graf stepped up out of the water and onto the narrow pathway that was cut into the crater’s outer wad.
Johann Krauss said, “What we must also remember about our enemy, however, is that they are, first and foremost, cats. They cannot change what they are. They think like cats, they act like cats.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that only one species of great cat—the cheetah—catches its prey by chasing after it.”
“How do other great cats catch their prey?”
“There are several strategies. Tigers in India are known to lie in wait covered in leaves, sometimes for hours at a time, waiting for their prey to arrive on the scene. Once their prey comes close enough, they pounce.
“On the other hand, lions in Africa employ quite sophisticated pack-hunting methods—one such technique involves a lioness parading around in front of a herd of gazelles while her colleagues sneak up on the gazelles from behind. It’s quite ingenious really, and very effective. But it is also very unusual.”
“Why?” Race asked.
“Because it implies the existence of some kind of communication between the lions.”
Race turned back to face the monitor.
The three soldiers had made it a short way up the spiraling path, so that they were now about ten feet above the wide body of water that covered the base of the crater.
Race was watching Sergeant Wilson’s camera view as it panned out over the flat expanse of water when suddenly he saw a flicker of movement on the water’s surface.
It had been a ripple of some sort—from something just underneath the water’s surface.
“What was that?” he said.
“What was what?”
“Wilson,” Race said, leaning close to the microphone. “Look to your right for a second, at the water.”
Graf and Scott must have heard Race’s question too because, at that moment, all three camera views panned right, out over the glistening expanse of water that encircled the base of the rock tower.
“I don’t see anything . . .” Scott said.
“There!” Race said, pointing at another ripple in the water. It seemed to have been made by the whiplash of an animal’s tail. An animal that seemed to be traveling in the direction of the three soldiers.
“What the hell . . . ?” Scott said as he looked out over the wide body of water before him.
A small bow-wave of water seemed to be cutting across the lake at an unusually quick speed—coming right toward him and his men.
Scott frowned. Then he took a cautious step forward, toward the edge of the path and the ten-foot drop down to the water’s surface.
He peered out over the edge.
And saw three black cats clawing their way up the sheer stone wall beneath him!
Scott quickly raised his M-16 but at that exact moment an enormous black shape burst out from a dark fissure in the rock wall behind him and slammed into his back, sending him flying off the edge of the pathway and down into the water below, where a whole cluster of other black shapes converged on him in an instant
Race stared at the monitor in stunned awe as he watched the whole horrific scene from Scott’s point of view. All he saw was the blur of slashing razor-like teeth and flailing human arms, all overlaid with Scott’s own gasps and futile screams.
Then, not a moment later, the camera went under the surface and the screen cut to hash and abruptly there was silence.
In the crater, a roar of gunfire shattered the unnatural stillness as the German soldier Graf jammed down on the trigger of his M-16.
But no sooner had a flaring tongue of fire spewed out from the muzzle of his gun than—smack!—Graf was pounced upon from above, by a cat that had been lurking on the rock wall high above him!
Further down the path, Chucky Wilson spun instantly to see the struggle between Graf and the cat, saw that the German paratrooper was putting up one hell of a fight.
And then suddenly—riiiiippppp!—Graf’s throat came clear off his neck and his body fell instantly limp.
Wilson blanched. “Oh, fuck.”
And at that moment the cat standing over Graf’s body slowly looked up at him and stared into his eyes.
Wilson froze. The big cat stepped ominously forward, over Graf’s immobile body, toward him.
Wilson spun.
Only to see another massive black cat standing on the path behind him, cutting off his retreat.
Nowhere to run.
Nowhere to hide.
Wilson turned again and saw the fissures and crevices in the rock wall and for a second thought there might be an escape there. He looked into one of the shadowy fissures in the rockface—
—and found himself staring at the smiling face of one of the cats.
And then with a suddenness that was nothing short of horrifying, the big cat’s jaws rushed toward him at phenomenal speed and in an instant there was nothing.
Everyone just stared at the monitor in silence.
“Oh my God,” Gaby Lopez breathed.
“Shit,” Lauren said.
The four remaining Green Berets just gazed at the monitor, speechless.
Race turned to the German zoologist, Krauss. “They only come out at night, do they?”
“Well,” Krauss said, bristling. “Quite obviously, the darkness at the base of the crater allows them to spend the greater part of the day there—”
“Kennedy,” Nash said sharply, “what’s the status on that extraction team?”
“I’m still trying to get through to Panama, sir,” Doogie said from over by the radio pack. “Signal keeps dropping out.”
“Keep trying.” Nash looked at his watch.
It was 11:30 .A.M.
“Shit,” he said.
He wondered what had happened to Romano and his team. Last he heard, they’d taken off from Cuzco at 7:45 P.M. last night. They should have
been here by now. What had happened to them? Could the Nazis have shot them down? Or had they just misread the totems and gotten hopelessly lost?
Whatever the case, if they were still alive, one thing was certain: they would find the village eventually.
Which meant he now had two hostile groups on their way to Vilcafor.
“Shit,” he said again.
Doogie came over.
“The extraction team took off from Panama one hour ago—three choppers: two Comanches, one Black Hawk. They estimate that they’ll be here by late afternoon, at approximately 1700 hours. I put up a UHF signal, so they can home in on that and extract us.”
As Doogie reported his news to Nash, a strange thought hit Race: Why wasn’t the Army extracting them via Cuzco? Why were they sending choppers down from Panama?
Surely the easiest way out of here was to go back the same way they had come.
It was at that moment that a sentence from the Santiago Manuscript popped into his head.
A thief never uses the same entrance twice.
Nash turned to Van Lewen. “Do we have access to the SAT-SN network?” He said it “Sat-sun”—“the Sat-sun network.”
“Yes, sir, we do.”
“Patch us in. Set a tracking pattern over central-eastern Peru. I want to know exactly where those Nazi bastards are. Cochrane.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get me satellite imagery of Vilcafor. We have to set up a defensive position.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s SAT-SN?” Gaby Lopez asked.
Troy Copeland answered. “SAT-SN is the acronym for the Satellite Aerospace Tracking and Surveillance Network. It’s the aerial equivalent of SOSUS, the array of hydrophones that the U.S. Navy has stretched across the North Atlantic to detect enemy submarines.
“Put simply, SAT-SN is an array of fifty-six geosynchronous satellites in near-earth orbit that monitor the world’s airspace, airplane by airplane.”
“If that’s the simple explanation,” Race said dryly, “I’d hate to hear the complex one.”
Copeland ignored him. “Any aircraft has seven different types of observable characteristics—radar, infrared, visual, contrails, engine smoke, acoustics and electromagnetic emissions. The SAT-SN satellites use all seven of these characteristics to record the signature and location of individual aircraft all over the world—military and civilian.
“What Colonel Nash wants now is a snapshot of central-eastern Peru so that he can spot every airplane over it—in particular, those planes outside regular commercial air corridors. From those pictures, we’ll be able to see where our Nazi friends are and hopefully calculate how long we’ve got till they get here.”
Race looked over at Nash.
He appeared to be deep in thought—as one would expect from a leader who had just lost three of his best fighting men.
“What are you thinking?” Race asked.
“We have to get that idol,” Nash said, “and soon. Those Nazis will be here any second now. But there’s no way past those cats. There’s no way of knowing how to get past them.’
Race cocked his head.
Then he said, “There was someone who knew.”
“Who?”
“Alberto Santiago.”
“What?”
“Remember the boulder that was wedged in the doorway to the temple?”
“Yeah . . .”
“On it was a warning: ‘Do not enter at any cost. Death looms within.’ That warning had the initials ‘A.S.’ written underneath it. Now I haven’t read enough of the manuscript yet, but I can only assume that Santiago and Renco stumbled onto the same problem we have now—before they arrived at Vilcafor, someone opened up that temple and let the rapas loose.
“But somehow,” Race said, “Santiago figured out a way to get those cats back inside the temple. Then he carved a warning into that boulder for anyone who would think to open it up again.
“Now, we used the manuscript to find this village and we figured that was all it was good for—but the copy I read was only partially completed. I’ll bet my life that the key to getting past those cats lies in the rest of the Santiago Manuscript.”
“But we don’t have any more of the manuscript,” Nash said.
“I’ll bet they do,” Race nodded at the four remaining Germans.
Schroeder nodded with his eyes.
“And I’ll bet you didn’t translate it beyond the part where it revealed the location of Vilcafor, did you?” Race said.
“No,” Schroeder said. “We did not”
A new look of purpose came over Nash’s face. He turned to Schroeder.
“Get your copy of the manuscript,” he said. “Get it now.”
A few minutes later, Schroeder handed Race a fat stack of paper wedged inside a worn cardboard folder. The stack of paper was a lot thicker than Race’s earlier pile had been.
The complete manuscript.
“I don’t suppose any of you four are your team’s translator?” Nash asked the BKA man.
Schroeder shook his head. “No. Our language expert was killed during the cats’ attack on the rock tower.”
Nash turned to Race. “Then it looks like you’re it, Professor. Lucky I insisted on bringing you along.”
Race retired to the ATV to read the new copy of the manuscript.
Once he was safely ensconced inside the big armored vehicle, he opened the folder surrounding the new manuscript. He was met by a Xeroxed cover sheet.
It was an odd cover sheet—markedly different from the overly elaborate one he had seen on the earlier copy. The main difference being that this cover sheet was remarkably, almost deliberately, plain.
The tide, The True Relation of a Monk in the Land of the Incas, was written in a very rough handwritten scrawl. One thing was for sure—elegance and majesty had been the last thing on the mind of whoever had written this.
And then it hit Race.
This was a photocopy of the actual, original Santiago Manuscript.
A Xerox of the document that had been written by Alberto Santiago himself.
Race leafed through the text. Page after page of Santiago’s scratchy handwriting unfolded before him.
He scanned the words, and soon he found the place where his last reading had stopped so abruptly—the part where Renco, Santiago and the criminal Bassario had landed at Vilcafor only to find it in ruins, only to find its people scattered all along the main street, bathed in blood . . .
THIRD READING
Renco, Bassario and I walked up the deserted main street of Vilcafor.
The silence around us filled my heart with dread. Never before had I heard the rainforest so mute.
I stepped over a blood-stained body. The head had been ripped clean from its trunk.
I saw other bodies, saw horrified faces with their eyes open in abject terror. Some had had their arms and legs wrenched from their sockets. Many, I saw, had had their throats removed by some violent external force.
“Hernando?” I whispered to Renco.
“Impossible,” my brave companion said. “There is no way he could have arrived here before we did.”
As we progressed down the main street of the town, I saw the giant dry moat that encircled the village. Two flat wooden bridges—constructed of several tree trunks laid down side by side—spanned its breadth on either side of the village. They looked like bridges that could be withdrawn at a moment’s notice, the bridges of a citadel town. Quite obviously, whoever had attacked Vilcafor had taken it by surprise.
We arrived at the citadel. It was a great two-tiered stone building, pyramidal in shape, but round, not square.
Renco hammered on the large stone door set into its base. He called Vilcafor’s name and proclaimed that it was he, Renco, arrived with the idol.
After a time, the stone slab was rolled aside from within and some warriors appeared, followed by Vilcafor himself, an old man with gray hair and hollow eyes. He was dressed in a red cape but he looke
d about as regal as a beggar on the streets of Madrid.
“Renco!” the old man exclaimed when he saw my companion.
“Uncle,” said Renco.
It was at that moment that Vilcafor saw me.
I suppose I expected a look of surprise to cross his face—at the sight of a Spaniard accompanying his nephew on his heroic mission—but none did. Rather Vilcafor just turned to Renco and said, “Is this the gold-eater my messengers have told me so much about? The one who helped you escape from your confinement, the one who rode out of Cuzco by your side?”
“He is, Uncle,” Renco replied.
They spoke in Quechuan, but by now Renco had improved my fledgling knowledge of this most peculiar language and I was able to understand most of what they said.
Vilcafor grunted. “A noble gold-eater . . . humph . . . I did not know such an animal existed. But if he is a friend of yours, my nephew, he is welcome here.”
The chieftain turned again, and this time he saw the criminal Bassario standing behind Renco with an impish grin spread across his face. Vilcafor recognized him instantly.
He shot an enraged look at Renco. “What is he doing here—?”
“He travels with me, Uncle. For a reason,” said Renco. He paused before he spoke again. “Uncle. What happened here? Was it the Span—?”
“No, my nephew. It was not the gold-eaters. No, it was an evil a thousand times worse than that.”
“What happened?”
Vilcafor bowed his head. “My nephew, this is not a safe place for you to seek refuge . . .”
“Why?”
“No . . . no, not safe at all.”
“Uncle,” said Renco and sharply. “What—have—you—done?”
Vilcafor looked up at Renco, then his eyes darted to the great rocky plateau that towered over the little town.
“Nephew, quickly, come inside the citadel. It will be nightfall soon and they come out with the dusk or at times of darkness. Come, you will be safe inside the fortress.”
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