by Chris Ryan
It happened again. This time he was thrown forwards and his hands ground into the gritty guano on the steps.
Amber’s voice shrieked down to him. ‘Alex get out, it’s a quake!’
There was a rumbling noise like the deepest notes on a cathedral organ. Alex powered up the steps. Stones and crusts of ancient bird droppings fell around him. He burst into the daylight. Paulo and Hex grabbed him and pulled him away from the tomb. The earth was shaking and they dived to the ground, covering their heads with their arms. A tree crashed over.
The quake stopped. For a long moment the five friends didn’t dare move.
‘Are we still alive?’ Hex’s voice was shaky.
Alex sat up. ‘Everyone all right?’
‘Hex, get off my foot,’ said Amber. ‘Then I’ll be all right.’
Some trees close by had fallen, but the damage to the tomb looked worse. The outer stones from one corner had tumbled away, showing pale surfaces.
‘Lucky you got out,’ said Amber.
Alex patted his shoulder suddenly. ‘Damn.’
‘What?’ said Paulo.
‘I dropped the night vision goggles.’
Amber high-stepped back to the entrance and flashed her torch into the tunnel. There were the goggles. They looked a very long way down. ‘I can see them.’
Hex came up behind her, followed by the others. ‘It’s all right, they’re shock proof.’
Amber was talking fast, an edge of panic in her voice. ‘Can we risk going down for them? We are in deep trouble if we lose them. I promised we were just going to do nice boring things like trekking, not exploring tombs. You know what my uncle’s like. If we don’t get them back in one piece . . .’
She didn’t need to say any more. If John Middleton suspected how dangerous their ‘holidays’ really were he’d withdraw his support – and there would be no more Alpha Force.
Paulo began playing his torch over the walls. ‘Let’s see if it’s safe to go back in.’
Alex was kicking himself. ‘They must have slipped off my shoulder. I should have had them on more securely.’
Paulo clicked off his torch. ‘The walls still look straight. I don’t think anything structural has moved. I think it’s safe to go down.’
Alex put his foot on the first step. ‘Right, I’ll be two ticks.’ He went down into the tunnel, moving as fast as he dared.
He reached the goggles and put them carefully over his shoulder and across his body. Now they shouldn’t fall off.
He had just started back up when he heard something. A desperate cry. It sounded human. He flashed the torch around behind him but he could only see walls. ‘Hello?’ he shouted. His voice echoed.
‘Hello?’ called Li’s amused voice from far up above.
‘Not you,’ called Alex.
The noise came again. It was definitely down in the pyramid – and it sounded like a cry of pain.
Alex cupped his hand to his mouth and called up. ‘There’s someone down here. Get Paulo and the medical kit.’
In the tunnel opening he saw Paulo slip his bergen off. A moment later he was pattering down, his broad shoulders nearly obscuring the light. ‘What’s up?’
Alex flashed the torch down the remainder of the staircase. ‘I think there’s someone in here.’
Five steps and they reached the bottom. It was well beyond the point where daylight would penetrate. They flicked their torches around. It was a small space, with barely enough room for the two well-built teenagers to turn around without their belt packs catching on each other.
‘It’s just a dead end,’ said Paulo.
‘Hello?’ called Alex. ‘Where are you? We’ve come to help.’
There was no answer. ‘There was definitely someone here,’ he went on.
‘Did your dad ever say how you get into these places?’
Alex shone his torch over the walls and looked at them carefully. ‘No. I think he didn’t want to give me ideas.’
‘Aha.’ Paulo had noticed something. Two of the walls were made of blocks, but the third looked a little different. ‘Look, this is carved to look as though it’s made of blocks, but it seems to be solid. Like a door.’
He pushed. It swung open noiselessly, as though on well-oiled hinges. ‘Maya engineering,’ whistled Paulo. ‘Bueno.’ He walked into the chamber. ‘Hello?’
There was a click.
Alex rugger-tackled Paulo to the ground. There was a flash and a bang, and a piercing whistle as something ricocheted off the walls.
7 ROBBER
They heard Amber’s voice from far away on the surface. ‘Are you OK?’
Alex shouted back through the open door, ‘Yes.’
A smell of cordite and gunpowder filled the tiny space. Paulo retrieved his torch and shone it around. A shotgun stood on the floor, its barrel propped up by rocks. A branch lay in front of them, vines linking it to the trigger. It must have been wedged in the door, ready to fall if it was opened. A booby trap. And it didn’t look like it had been set by the ancient Maya.
Alex found his torch and went for the weapon. It was an old shotgun. Alex knew the type – it held just one round at a time, so it wasn’t about to go off again. The wood was battered but the barrel wasn’t rusty. It was a working, well-maintained weapon. He broke the breech and pulled out a spent red cartridge.
A voice babbled angrily from the darkness. Paulo swept the torch around the room. It met two glistening eyes at floor level, blinking back at him. Dense black hair, frosted with dust. Thick Indian lips revealing missing teeth. A sweat rag tied around the forehead.
‘Hello,’ said Paulo. ‘Nice welcome. Do you speak English? Espagnol?’
The man looked at them blankly and then spoke a few words.
Alex looked at Paulo. ‘Is that a Spanish dialect?’
Paulo shook his head. ‘It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard.’ He flashed the torch over the man. He was lying next to what seemed to be a sarcophagus. A large flat slab of stone, about two metres long, had fallen onto the man’s leg and pinned him to the floor.
‘A tomb robber,’ said Alex. ‘It looks like he was trying to move that slab. He’d closed the door so he wouldn’t be seen and rigged it so that if anyone came in they’d get shot. Then the earthquake hit.’
‘Watch him,’ said Paulo, ‘while I check his injuries.’ Although the robber probably couldn’t hurt them, they weren’t going to take their safety for granted after such a greeting. He certainly seemed to be looking at Paulo and Alex with hostility. ‘I hope he hasn’t got friends outside who’ll come and sort us out.’
Alex leaned against a stone chest. It put him above the man’s eye line. All the better to reinforce the idea that they were in control, just in case. ‘No, I think he’s working on his own. Otherwise why the booby trap?’
The robber glared at Alex, then flinched away from the bright torch. Alex kept the light on him for a little longer than he needed to. Being shot at made him a bit unsympathetic. The sarcophagus behind hardly seemed to be worth the bother anyway. From what Alex could see it contained only dusty skeletons of birds and a few pieces of pottery.
Paulo got to work. Years of tending injured animals on the ranch had made him a natural medic, and he’d been on courses since. First, was there any bleeding? No.
‘Shall we move that slab?’ asked Alex.
‘Yes,’ said Paulo. Then he changed his mind. ‘No. Wait a minute. Let me think.’ A little voice was telling him to be careful with crush injuries. Damaged muscles released toxic chemicals into the blood-stream. When you released the patient, these would flow out of the trapped limbs and could prove fatal. But Paulo had a feeling this case would be OK. Why? he asked himself. You couldn’t go on a hunch when a man’s life might be at stake. It came back to him. It would be all right because the injured man had been trapped for only a short time.
‘Are we moving this thing or not?’ said Alex.
‘Yeah.’ Paulo bent down and Alex went to the other side.
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The man let out a cry as they took hold. ‘It’s OK,’ said Paulo. ‘We won’t hurt you.’
‘We don’t bear grudges, after all,’ added Alex.
They pushed. The slab was heavy but they managed to lean it against the sarcophagus. The casualty struggled to sit up and fell back, panting.
Paulo looked at Alex, incredulous. ‘Do you think he’s trying to escape?’
‘Well, I suppose he thinks we’re going to put him in jail.’
Paulo knelt down next to him. ‘Shh,’ he said. ‘Just hold still. Let’s see what you’ve done.’
The right leg was an odd shape, with a bulge halfway down the thigh, just below a ragged pair of shorts. Paulo ran his torch up and down it. ‘A few bumps and scrapes, but it’s already stopped bleeding.’ He was about to touch the swelling, but the man grabbed his hand, his eyes urgent.
Paulo pulled away. ‘OK, I get it; that hurts.’ The leg was probably broken. Even if the man could get free he couldn’t go anywhere.
‘Alex, can you call the heli?’ said Paulo. ‘He needs to go to hospital.’
‘I’ll get the others to build a stretcher,’ Alex replied as he left the tomb.
Paulo sat back and thought about his patient. Was there anything else he needed to do? The man was breathing easily, if fast. He wasn’t in shock, but of course that might happen at any minute. Paulo shone his torch on the man’s foot. It was shoeless; the sole was like leather and the skin was filthy. But the toes were the same colour as those on the other foot and they weren’t turning blue, so the blood supply wasn’t damaged and the limb wasn’t about to die. He seemed stable. Paulo relaxed a little.
As he got to his feet, something in the sarcophagus caught his eye. He shone the torch over it.
A face looked back at him – eyes, lips and skin covered in the centuries-old dust. He flicked the torch away, shocked. Was it a mummy?
He realized the robber was watching him closely. He’d already spotted what Paulo had seen. There was a possessive look in his eyes. What was in there?
Paulo slowly shone the torch back into the tomb.
It was a face, but it wasn’t flesh. It was still and solid. Nor did it look like a skull; it looked like a piece of art.
Paulo reached into the tomb and brushed it gently with his fingers.
The man on the floor spoke rapidly in his incomprehensible language. He sounded angry.
Where Paulo’s hand had been was a trail of bright gold.
Li came down the steps. ‘Alex and the others are making a stretcher – I thought I’d come down and . . .’ She tailed off. Paulo was staring down at something in his hands.
He saw her and turned it round so that she could see.
A mask of gold.
Li gasped. She moved towards it. Paulo handed it to her carefully. Made from beaten gold, the mask was a lifelike face with a wide forehead, aristocratic nose and fine lips. The eyes had small pupil-like holes, and between the parted lips was a T-shaped piece of silver.
‘I thought it was a corpse when I saw it in there,’ said Paulo. ‘I saw that face and nearly ran out to join you guys.’
The man on the floor let out another tirade.
‘Ignore him,’ said Paulo. ‘He’s been grumbling ever since we arrived.’
Li shone her torch into the tomb. There was a skeleton, brown and looking as crumbled as old leaves. It wore a jade ring around its twig-like finger and big circles of jade positioned where each ear would have been. Around the edge of the sarcophagus were carvings.
There were footsteps outside and Alex came into the chamber. Hex and Amber followed behind, carrying the stretcher. They’d cut down saplings and threaded them through one of the hammocks.
They manoeuvred it into the small space while Paulo assessed the patient. ‘I think we should splint the leg. Otherwise the broken ends of the bones are going to rub together when we move him.’
Hex glanced towards the door. ‘Tell me what you need and I’ll go and get it.’ He sounded keen to get out.
‘A piece of wood, like you used for the stretcher.’ Paulo held his hands so that they were about a metre apart. ‘About this long, or longer. Plus lots of bandages and something to pad the leg.’
‘Sure.’ Hex turned and was out in a flash.
Amber watched him as he bounded up towards the sky. ‘He didn’t want to come down,’ she said. ‘He offered to stay on watch at the top. Only I told him there was nothing to watch.’
‘Amber,’ said Alex, ‘sometimes you are a pure sadist.’
But Amber was shining her torch around the walls, curious to see her surroundings. Suddenly she gasped. ‘Oh wow, what’s all this?’ Her beam found a detailed frieze in green and rusty red. It was one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen.
Alex ran up the stairs. The heli was due to fly overhead soon on its way to the rigs. If they were going to catch it today they had to set up the signal immediately.
He found his bergen and drew out a bag. Then he had to pick his spot. It didn’t have to be somewhere the heli could land, but it did have to be under a gap in the tree canopy so they could communicate by hand signals. He found one just a few metres away.
He unpacked the signalling equipment. There was a large red balloon and a big rubberized bladder. Alex filled the bladder with water from their supplies, trying to keep the opening upright. It looked a bit disgusting, like a cow’s udder. There was a sachet of chemicals, printed with warnings not to eat them. Alex tore the wrapper open and poured the powder into the water. When it hit the liquid it started fizzing. Good. Now he had to get the red balloon over the mouth of the bladder of water. He suspected it wouldn’t be as easy as it sounded. In his experience balloons tended to squirm away at the crucial moment, especially from sweaty fingers. But to his surprise the balloon went onto the bladder easily.
The water was fizzing furiously and the bladder was warm. Whatever those chemicals were, they were producing a fierce reaction. The balloon was growing. He had visions of it pinging off the bladder and zooming into the trees with a rubbery fart. He secured the two together with a metal twist tie, taking no chances.
The balloon was now a metre wide. Alex took the last item out of the kit – a piece of cord. He tied one end around the neck of the balloon, tied the other around a secure branch and stood the whole thing on the ground, lined up with the gap in the trees. Now he didn’t mind if it lifted off.
The balloon grew to two metres and began to rise. Alex grinned with triumph as it lifted past the trees, sending birds scattering in a flutter of wings and startled hoots. Soon the cord was taut, moving as the balloon drifted on air currents above. Alex remembered when they first arrived: the vast plain of green that was the tree canopy seen from above. Now there would be a big red blob in the middle of the green, tethered above their position.
Alex heard noises from the tomb. Amber came into view, walking backwards very slowly with the handles of the stretcher. Alex rushed to help but they seemed to have enough manpower. Paulo and Hex were at the other end, holding the stretcher on their shoulders like pallbearers so that they could get the awkward load up the stairs. Li brought up the rear, shining her torch so it lit the way for Paulo and Hex. In her other hand was the gold mask.
When Amber reached the surface Alex took one of the handles. Once Hex and Paulo were on level ground the four of them manoeuvred the stretcher onto one of the walls at the edge of the tomb and set it down gently. That way, it would be easier to lift again.
‘Heli should be passing over soon,’ said Alex.
Paulo drew a hand across his forehead, getting his breath back as he checked on the patient again. ‘We’ll have to check his circulation every twenty or thirty minutes. In case a blood vessel’s been crushed.’
Hex shook his head to get rid of the drops of sweat dribbling down his forehead. ‘We can use the infra-red goggles. It will show if his extremities are getting cold.’ He slicked his fringe back and looked around. ‘Where are they, by
the way?’
Paulo suddenly felt rather alarmed. Alex had been wearing them when they’d crashed to the ground trying to avoid being shot. He handed the goggles to Hex without comment, but behind his back Paulo could see he had his fingers crossed.
Hex got the case open and powered the goggles up. He looked through them at the robber’s legs. ‘The patient looks fine.’ He took the goggles off and put them away.
Li was carefully brushing the dust off the golden mask. It gleamed in the light that filtered down through the trees. The face was so lifelike she felt she could see what the dead man had really looked like, all those years ago.
Alex looked dubious. ‘You decided to bring the mask out?’
‘It belongs in a museum,’ said Li. ‘If we leave it here now the tomb’s been opened, someone else might come along and help themselves.’
‘Fair point,’ Alex agreed.
‘There was other stuff in there too,’ said Amber. ‘More jewellery.’ She rolled up her trouser leg and scratched, ignoring Alex’s disapproving look. ‘Once we’ve dropped this guy off in hospital we can take it to the big museum in Belize City.’
Alex looked annoyed. ‘Wait a minute. I didn’t think we were going to Belize City. We’ve still got our exercise to do.’
Hex was looking at the mask. He felt its weight. It had to be solid gold. ‘We’ve got to take it there in person,’ he said. ‘This thing must be priceless. It wouldn’t be fair to just give it to the pilot, pat him on the back and say, “Drop that off, there’s a good chap”?’
‘Hex is right,’ said Paulo. ‘We’ve got to take it ourselves.’
Alex looked glum but had to agree. ‘I suppose we can come back and pick up where we left off.’
‘I’ll tell you something else,’ said Hex. ‘We’d better get the other valuables that are in that tomb or they’ll disappear.’
Amber jumped to her feet. ‘Good idea. Are you coming?’
She was only teasing but Hex’s shudder was for real. ‘Not a chance.’
But Li was keen. She hurdled a wait-a-while plant and joined Amber. ‘We should take some pictures of the friezes so we can show the archaeologists. Anyone got a camera phone?’