That feeling was exacerbated the farther along the causeway they traveled. There was more gold, more tumbled ruin, and still no sign that any of the buildings had ever actually been lived in. He remembered the tighter-packed buildings they’d passed on the track along the far side of the hill on that first night, and wondered if they’d need to sweep that area too, or whether that would be just as empty and dead as this.
He looked across to the other side of the pathway and saw that Hynd and McCally had advanced almost up to the steps of the pyramid, 20 yards or so ahead of Bank’s threesome.
“Wiggo,” he said. “Get a shift on. Time’s a wasting here.”
They hurried past the last tumbled building, pausing only long enough to make sure it was more of the same mixture of aged ruin and scattered gold, and met Hynd and McCally at the foot of the pyramid steps.
“All clear on your side, Sarge?” he asked.
“Aye,” Hynd replied. “But there’s enough gold to buy Aberdeen twice and still have change.”
“Same over here,” Banks replied. He tapped at his ear and spoke to the chopper captain. “All clear so far. We’re heading inside the pyramid to check that out so we might go dark. Watch our backs.”
“We’re right here and not going anywhere until you get back, Captain,” came the reply, then Banks led the squad, with Buller in the middle, up the steep stairs of the pyramid.
*
Like their first ascent, it proved to be hard going. Buller, not having the benefit of their military-grade fitness, struggled after the first few steps, and they were forced to keep a snail’s pace to cater for him.
“We shouldn’t even be going this way,” the businessman complained at the approximate halfway point of the climb, where he had to stop for a rest. “The gold seam’s down in the cave far below.”
“Securing the site means securing the whole site,” Banks replied. “Not only the shiny, expensive bits.”
“There’s naebody here. An idiot could see that.”
Wiggins stepped up close to the man.
“Are you calling the captain here an idiot?”
“That’s not what I meant…” Buller blustered. “I’m just saying…”
“And I’m just telling you. Last time. Shut the fuck up or you’ll get a skelp.”
Buller looked from Wiggins to Banks, and back to Wiggins. The private winked at him, and smiled.
“What’s it to be?”
Buller went back to climbing.
*
Banks waited on the top step for Buller to catch up. He tapped at his ear and spoke, looking down the length of the causeway to where the chopper sat quiet at the far end.
“Everything still okay down there?” he asked.
“All quiet, Captain. I think we’re the only ones here.”
“Let’s hope so,” he said. “Checking out now. Will check back in when I can.”
Buller heaved himself up the last step, stopped, and looked around.
“Well, you got us up here. Now what?”
“Now we go down through the dungeon we were held in before,” Banks said. “I need to make sure it’s empty. And it’ll get us to your cave soon enough. What has me worried is that those people, when they weren’t being bloody big snakes, must have lived somewhere, eaten somewhere, and we haven’t found that yet. I won’t be happy until then. So into the pyramid we go, to see what’s what.
“But first, I need to warn you. If nobody’s been here since the night before last, then your man Wilkes will be inside here. And it’s not pretty.”
Buller waved a hand as if pushing the words away.
“It won’t be anything I haven’t already seen. I told you before, they made me watch.”
“It’s your funeral,” Banks said.
“No. It’s Wilkes’. But he got paid well enough, so fuck him.”
“Nobody gets paid well enough for this,” Banks said, and led them into the altar room at the top of the pyramid.
*
Wilkes’ body was still splayed out on the altar. A swarm of bloated black flies crawled over it feasting in so thick a carpet that the body appeared to squirm in the throes of a fit.
“Well, that’s fucking disgusting,” Wiggins said.
Before Banks could counsel caution, the private stepped forward, and rolled the body off the altar. The swarm of flies rose lazily in the air and started to dissipate almost immediately. Wiggins went over to the wall and Banks saw that the cauldron of oil still sat there in the corner. Wiggins bent toward it, obviously intent on using the contents to burn the body. He didn’t get as far as lifting it, for the room echoed with the sound of rock grinding on rock. They had to step back as the altar stone slid across the floor, slowly with loud grinding and the crash and clatter of wood on wood somewhere under their feet.
Seconds later, they stood looking down into a dark hole below them. A run of stone steps led away, down into the darkness.
- 19 -
“I guess we’re back to the Indiana Jones shite then?” Wiggins said.
Banks leaned forward, switched on his gun light and waved the beam down the newly exposed steps. At the same time, he smelled something all too familiar. It wasn’t strong, but it was distinctive, the odor of vinegar and burnt oil.
“We don’t have time for stumbling around in the dark. We need to get to the fucking gold,” Buller protested again when Banks stepped down onto the first of the stairs, but the man went quiet when Wiggins prodded him in the back with his gun barrel. All five of them descended in step into the darkness below.
Banks took point, keeping his light steady ahead so that he could always see where he was putting his feet. It was even warmer here than it had been out in the heat of the day. It wasn’t humid, rather being a stifling dry heat that felt like he was breathing fire. The tang of oil and vinegar got stronger as they descended. After a few feet, they passed the mechanism that worked the pivot for moving the altar, a complex set of wooden gears, ropes, and pulleys that looked almost too rotten to be functional. Banks studied it only long enough to ensure there wouldn’t be a trap sprung at their back then continued the descent.
Even Buller knew well enough to keep quiet, and they went down in silence, into what was quickly becoming an oppressive heat and stench. Banks was considering retracing their steps in search of better air when he felt a breath of breeze in his face, and a cooler one at that. The sound of his footfalls, which had been dull slaps, now took on an echoing, wider quality, and as he suspected, they arrived at the bottom of the stairwell soon afterward, to be faced with a dark, open area ahead that his rifle light wasn’t quite powerful enough to penetrate.
There was another smell here too, even above the tang of vinegar and oil. It took Banks a few seconds to recognize it, as he hadn’t been expecting it here in the dark, but it too was unmistakable once identified. It was an almost meaty taste of human body sweat.
He pulled down the night vision goggles and switched them on.
He immediately wished he hadn’t.
*
They stood in the doorway of another square chamber, this one being the biggest so far. Like the others, this one was covered wall and ceiling with more of the carvings, the same size as the tiling they’d seen outside, although here they were done, not in gold, but in stone as ancient as that which made up the pyramid steps outside. And also unlike the buildings outside, this place was most definitely occupied.
The room was some 30 feet square. Bodies sat, backs straight, legs outstretched, all seated close to each other around all of the walls. There was a thin, whistling noise and Banks realized it was breathing, all of them, some 50 individuals at his best count, breathing in and out in unison.
They appeared to be a mixed population, old and young, man and woman, but all of them stark naked sitting there in the dark, breathing together and staring, wide-eyed into emptiness.
“What is it?” Buller whispered from behind him. “What can you see?”
Banks
realized the man was the only one of them without the benefit of the night goggles. He stepped closer to the nearest wall and shone his light in the face of the nearest sitting figure. The woman, middle-aged and as pale as alabaster, didn’t so much as blink. Buller yelped in fear, the first sign of any emotion he’d shown, but Banks couldn’t really blame him for it.
“Bloody hell, Cap,” Wiggins whispered in the dark. “What kind of shite have you led us into this time?”
Buller answered.
“We need to kill them,” he said. “We need to kill them all, right now.”
“Bugger that for a lark,” Wiggins said. Banks hushed him to quiet and pulled Buller back into the doorway, getting up close and keeping his voice soft and low.
“I’m not here to murder civilians for you,” he said.
“Civilians? Who said anything about fucking civilians? These aren’t people, you idiot. Don’t you see? They’re fucking snakes, and they’re hiding from the sun in here waiting for night.”
As soon as Buller mentioned it, Banks knew the man had to be right. He left the doorway and went back over toward the woman, getting as close to her as he had to Buller seconds before. Up close it was obvious, especially when he lifted the goggles and studied her under the light from his rifle.
Her pupils had a slit running down the iris, yellow and golden, and the veins at her neck pulsed as blackly as the ones he’d seen on Giraldo before the change came over him. She didn’t blink, even when he shone the light directly in her eyes, although a thin, forked tongue slid from between her lips and she hissed as she breathed.
Banks moved to the man beside her; he had exactly the same symptoms, down to the slithering tongue when light was shone in his eyes. Banks backed away to the squad in the doorway.
“For once, it seems that this wanker’s right,” he said. “They’re all infected.”
“It’s not an infection,” Buller said. “It’s some kind of magic.”
“Fucking snake magic bullshit,” Wiggins said. “Aye, that’ll be right.”
Once again, Banks hushed them into quiet.
“Whatever it is, we’re getting out of here. About turn.”
Buller almost shouted.
“We can’t leave yet. We need to kill them.”
“Not going to happen,” Banks said softly. “This is a job for doctors, not soldiers.”
“I demand you kill these fuckers,” Buller said, and this time he shouted. It rang and echoed in the chamber. The cadence of the heavy breathing around them got faster, and in one of the corners, something heavy moved.
“If you don’t shut the fuck up, right now, I’ll shoot you in the knee and leave you down here with them,” Wiggins whispered, and even through the night goggles, Banks saw the blood leave Buller’s face and the fear grow in his eyes.
“You wouldn’t dare,” he whispered back.
“Just fucking try me,” Wiggins replied.
When Hynd and McCally led them back upstairs, Buller hurried behind them, as if keen to put plenty of space between himself and Wiggins.
*
Banks had them stop only as they approached the exit hole back up to the altar room.
“Cally, you’re up,” he said, pointing to the rotting timbers of the gear mechanism. “Can you rig this somehow so that it will close at our backs, and stay closed unless we fuck about with it from above?”
McCally cast an eye over the mechanism.
“Give me the sarge and five minutes and we’ll see what we can do?”
“Get to it then,” Banks said. “But keep your eye on the stairwell. Once these fuckers start to move, they move fast.”
He led Buller and Wiggins up into the altar room, then out onto the top of the pyramid where they sucked in some welcome fresher air.
“You’re making a big mistake,” Buller said as Banks handed Wiggins a cigarette and they both lit up.
“Maybe,” Banks said. “But I’m a soldier, not a murderer, and I’m not about to start now, snakes or no snakes. Not when I can trap them down there, and do this.”
He tapped at his ear and called up the chopper pilot.
“Still here,” he said.
“I am pleased to hear it, Captain,” the reply came. “Site secured?”
“We’ve still got more of a sweep to do,” he replied. “But I need a favor. I need you to get a medical team on standby to come in as soon as we give the all clear. We’ve got some kind of contagion among the locals here that’s going to need a lot of help.”
The pilot didn’t ask any questions, accepting Banks’ word.
“I will make the call as soon as you check off, Captain.”
“Thank you,” Banks replied. “I’ll check back in within the hour. Hopefully, it’s all plain sailing from here on in.”
*
“I still think this is a mistake,” Buller said as they went back into the altar room.
“Aye, we heard you already,” Wiggins replied. “My offer still stands if you want a bullet in the knee or a skelp.”
Buller didn’t get time to reply as McCally and Hynd came up the steps into the room. McCally held a thick, frayed rope that stretched back down the hole.
“Give this a hard tug, then let go,” he said, handing it to Banks. “Then cross your fingers. That shit down there’s as rotted as my old grannie’s front teeth. I cannae guarantee it’s going to take the weight.”
“Stand back then,” Banks said, and pulled hard on the rope. He heard a loud clunk below them, wood against wood, and let go of the rope at the same time as it was pulled hard from his hand. The sound of rock grinding on rock echoed around them, and the altar stone slid slowly back into place. As if from a distance, they heard crunching and splintering as wood split and something below tumbled away down the stairwell.
“The proverbial spanner in the works,” McCally said with a smile. “Nobody’s coming back up unless we shove this block of stone out the way from up here.”
“Good job, Cally,” Banks said. “Take five and have a fag. Then we’ll head down below, and get this wanker his cave of gold.”
- 20 -
The top run of steps down the passage at the rear of the altar room were still slippery with oil, but the rest of the descent went without a hitch. They wound their way down, firstly to the cells where they’d been held earlier, then descended in the dim winding stairwell. Now that it was daylight outside, they had enough light coming in the slits of the windows to show them the steps ahead. They didn’t meet any resistance all the way to the foot of the stairs and arrived in the cavern minutes later.
The first thing that Banks noticed was that there was no body on the floor in the doorway. The dead man was gone.
“I ken he didn’t get up and walk,” Wiggins said. “You cut his chest and belly to ribbons then burned his insides out. So where did the buggering thing go?”
“Eaten, is my guess,” Buller said. “Eaten by his pals. They’re fucking big snakes. It’s what fucking big snakes do.”
It wasn’t the floor where Buller had his attention focused, but on the ceiling and walls of the cavern. Now, with more light available and daylight streaming in the doorway, the extent of the seam was even more impressive. The wide band ran, six feet thick in places, fully across the whole extent of the chamber.
“I’m going to be as rich as fucking Croesus. This could go all the way up through the hill,” Buller said in whispered awe. “It’s probably why they built the temple here in the first place.”
“I doubt that,” Banks said in reply. “You saw the rooms up on the causeway. They didn’t worship the gold; they treated it as something to use in building work, a canvas for their stories.”
“It must be the gold. Why else would they put such a bloody huge temple in the middle of the Amazonian jungle?”
“You said it yourself,” Banks said. “Some kind of snake worship. Magic, I believe was the word you used? There’s something else here we haven’t got to the bottom of yet.”
Buller wasn’t paying attention. He was already walking away across the cavern, charting the course of the gold seam with a raised hand. Banks left him to it and went to the doorway before tapping at his ear again.
“Banks checking in,” he said. The Brazilian captain came back loud and clear in his ear.
“Glad to hear you safe and sound,” the pilot said. “Nothing to report up here; all quiet on the causeway.”
“Let’s hope it stays that way. We’ll be with you in 10 minutes. I want to check this outer track here. If we make it back okay, then you can go ahead and call in that medical team. Looks like the site is secure.”
“What about the fucking huge snakes, Cap?” Wiggins said when Banks stepped back into the cavern.
“If the theory is right, and they’re all infected people, then we’ve got them trapped down there in the dark under the pyramid. If any others turn up, you have my permission to shoot the fuck out of them. I’ve had about enough sneaking about in this place to do me for a while. Let’s do a reccy up the hill, then we can leave this wanker with his gold and get the fuck off this hill. Whatever happens next is his problem, not ours.”
“We need to get more people out here,” Buller said. “Geologists, engineers…”
“Doctors first, for those poor bastards we left down in the dark,” Hynd said.
“I told you, they can’t be helped.”
Wiggins stood up close to Buller again.
“And I told you to shut the fuck up. They’ll be helped. You might be a murdering fuckwit, but that’s not how we do things in this squad.”
Operation Amazon Page 10