“I don’t know where you two think you’re going but…”
“We weren’t going anywhere except to find the tomb. You have your expertise and we have ours. Let Dr. Richter and me do our jobs, otherwise your boss will never get what he wants. Think about that for a minute. Do you really want to disappoint Kristoph? Somehow, I don’t think that would be a wise career move,” Randall said.
The two men faced each other, silently staring each other down. Sauder scowled at Randall, his breathing hard and throaty. Randall’s face, on the other hand, was expressionless. Sauder blinked first.
“Find the damn tomb,” the captain said.
The group resumed their trek along the path, rounded a turn and found a small opening on the north side of the trail. Randall was the first to enter, followed closely by Richter and then the mercenaries. Unlike the arched pathway they had been following, the clearing was round, and the overhead vegetation had been pruned back higher than the path itself. Over time, the jungle had slowly reclaimed the once open clearing, but remnants of the opening were still visible.
“Spread out and look for the entrance. It will look like a large stone set into the side of a hill,” Randall said, scanning the area.
The team dispersed and searched the clearing. After a short time, Randall heard the distinct voice of his fellow scientist.
“I think I found it!” Richter shouted.
Randall located him in front of a large mound on the east side of the clearing. Framed in logs taken from nearby trees, a large stone rested to the left of the open entrance. Someone had already been there. Randall and Richter exchanged glances, the latter man’s hands trembling with fear.
“What are you waiting for,” Sauder said, pushing his way past them as he entered the earthen mound. Randall was the next to enter followed by Richter.
The tomb was dark, except for a shaft of light coming from the entrance and from the beam of Sauder’s gun mounted flashlight. Despite being open, the air inside was stale and musty. Randall clicked on his own light and surveyed the interior. The shaft fed into a main chamber approximately six to eight feet from the entrance. Large ceremonial jars, used for washing, flanked the entrance to the main chamber that was adorned with a small altar in the center. The altar was constructed of rock and was completely bare. To the rear of the chamber, another entrance led deeper into the mountain.
Randall entered the passage with Richter close behind. The tunnel ended and opened into another chamber, smaller than the first. Directly in the back, cut into the dirt, was a large rectangular opening with a stone sarcophagus. Randall and Richter moved toward it and immediately realized it was open. The heavy stone cover lay on the dirt floor, propped against the side of the coffin.
Richter approached slowly with Randall by his side. They peered into the stony tomb and found the remains of the old woman from the legend. Long bony fragments of what were once her arms were neatly folded, hands clasped near her waist. Her rib cage lay exposed and appeared to have a roughly circular indentation near the sternum, but the medallion was missing.
“It’s not here,” Richter said.
Randall shined his light into the coffin, searching for additional contents. He spied a small rectangular item wrapped in cloth laying near the skeleton’s feet. He reached for it.
“What did you find?” Sauder said, shining his light at the Professors.
Randall snapped his hand back out, just as Sauder arrived by his side. The captain’s sudden appearance kept him from retrieving the article.
“Just skeletal remains. Someone else must have gotten here before us,” Richter replied.
Sauder shoved him aside roughly and walked up to the sarcophagus. Shining his light into the stone coffin, he confirmed that the medallion was missing. He turned to face Richter.
“You said it would be here. Where the hell is it?”
“It was here…someone must have found it before us,” Richter stammered.
Without fanfare, Sauder raised his weapon and shot Richter directly in the chest.
“No!” Randall yelled, catching Richter as he fell backwards. He gently set him on the ground, blinking in disbelief.
“Let’s go,” Sauder said, swinging his weapon in front of him and walking out into the main chamber.
Randall shone his light into Richter’s face which was contorted in pain. Tears rolled from the dying man’s eyes as he looked at Randall.
“All I wanted was to keep my job,” Richter whispered.
“It’s okay, we’ll get you out of here. Just hang in there.”
Richter’s eyes drooped close, and he stopped breathing. Randall felt for a pulse but found none. He sat on the floor holding him, his mind refusing to believe what had just happened. The shock of seeing Richter die was overwhelming. Nothing in his life had prepared him for a moment like this, and he sat in the cold dirt holding the now lifeless body.
Sauder reappeared in the doorway. “Come on, we need to get back to the ship,” he said coldly.
“You son of a bitch! You didn’t have to kill him!” Randall yelled. He set Richter’s body on the ground and strode towards Sauder’s figure, which was outlined by the light on his gun. He heard a loud clicking noise as the light raised, pointing directly at his head.
“Better think twice Randall or you’re next.”
Randall was dumbstruck at the sudden turn of events. Slowly, sanity crept back into his consciousness. He turned away from Sauder and knelt down beside Richter’s body.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m sure he has family that might want his belongings,” Randall said, finding Richter’s wallet and removing a ring he had on his right hand. “Unlike you psychopaths, most of us have loved ones who would want to have something to remember us by. The very least I can do is try to give them that.”
Sauder snorted, “You’re wasting your time. If I were you, I would be more worried about my own future.”
“Yeah, well maybe I know something you don’t,” Randall said, rising to his feet. He walked directly towards Sauder. “I know Kristoph doesn’t have a goddam thing except for me. If he wants to beat Dumond, he needs my help. That means you and your men can’t do shit to me until Kristoph finds the medallion.”
Randall saw the light swing up, felt something hard come back down on his head, and everything went black. When he awoke, he was back on Kristoph’s ship, lying on a bunk in a cell.
Randall sat up, rubbing his head, which ached terribly. He quickly searched for Richter’s possessions, but they were gone. He was alone in the empty room. Randall tried to make sense of the surreal turn of events that had ended with Richter’s death, but his thoughts were a jumbled mess. He was jarred back to reality by the sound of the door unlocking.
“Get ready, we’re leaving,” a soldier said, walking over to Randall and jerking him to his feet.
“Where are we going now?”
There was no reply.
Chapter twenty
The two Aerospatiale SA 341 Gazelle helicopters flew in formation, carrying the 12 members of Dumond’s party to a landing zone near the ruins. Sam had been happily surprised to see Phil, again, when she arrived back at the compound. Phil had explained to her how he, Mike and her father had found the chamber room and fallen through the trap door. He also told her how Mike had broken his leg, and how her father had left them with all of his supplies while he looked for help. Not surprisingly, Ackers had found him with Mike and had taken Mike somewhere, but Phil had not seen Mike, since he was lifted from the cavern.
The odd part of the story was the way Phil and Ackers had followed Dr. Randall’s footprints until they had come to a chasm deep within the mountain. The footprints had ended near a sheer rock face on the other side of the chasm, but they couldn’t find Dr. Randall. Sam’s heart sank into her chest when she heard this news. It seemed that her father must have fallen into the chasm. It was hard to tell who had taken the news worse, Phil or Sam. Sam realized that her dad
was a father figure to both Phil and Mike, and the pain she felt at his loss was reciprocated by both of his favorite graduate students. With the elder Dr. Randall now gone, all hopes of finding Vilcabamba rested with Sam.
“Do you think we’ll find the city, Sam?”
“I’m not sure. If dad couldn’t find it, I don’t see why I would have any better luck. He’d been researching this for years and knew where to look, better than anyone.”
“It’s okay, we’ll be fine,” Phil said with feigned confidence.
“We will be fine, and we’ll find Mike, I promise.” Sam looked straight into Phil’s eyes, and he immediately saw the same look of determination he had so frequently seen in her father’s eyes. It was hard not to get emotional thinking of the Professor.
The two helicopters landed, and three mercenaries disembarked. The fourth pointed his gun at Sam and Phil and motioned for them to exit the helicopter.
“Watch the props!” came the warning from one of the soldiers on the ground.
Ackers and Dumond had been on the lead helicopter and were already on the ground waiting for them. The group of twelve waited as the helicopters shut down their engines.
Ackers signaled to two of his men to stay and guard the helicopters. “I want radio silence, unless there are signs of Kristoph’s men,” he barked.
“Who’s Kristoph?” Phil asked.
“Apparently he and Dumond are in some secret organization. From what I can gather, they’re the ones who funded my dad’s research and this expedition to find the temple.”
“If they’re working together, then why are they fighting?”
“It sounds like Kristoph is trying to steal the power source away from Dumond.”
“Great, so we have two groups of psychopaths trying to find this thing. That’s comforting.”
Sam couldn’t help but smile at Phil’s honesty. “We’d better stay focused; things could turn nasty in a hurry.”
“What do you mean, Sam?”
“Something tells me that Kristoph and his men aren’t giving up so easily.”
Phil sighed. “They really don’t prepare you for this type of stuff in grad school.”
The group pushed on through the jungle.
The Amazon Rainforest contains an incredible diversity of both plant and animal life, and it seemed like they had encountered every variety of the former and many of the latter. From her perspective, the jungle was a nearly impenetrable wall of vines, plants and trees. Sam wasn’t entirely sure if her captors really knew where they were going, a thought that was reinforced when the group stopped near yet another solid wall of vegetation.
“Why are we stopping?” Samantha asked.
“We’ve arrived at our destination,” Dumond replied.
Sam stared at Dumond, who was at the front of the group conversing with Ackers. At first, she didn’t see it, but as she shifted slightly and continued to look, the entrance to the ruins came into view.
“That’s amazing,” she said.
“Indeed it is, Professor. Now, I need the two of you to stay close by as we go in.” Dumond motioned to Ackers’s men to bring them forward.
As Sam walked through the entrance into the ruins, she was amazed at the incredible sight that befell her eyes. Looking at the passageway head on, it was a nearly perfect square. As she walked through it, she ran her hand along the smooth wall.
“How did they build this with the crude tools they had?”
“That’s what your dad asked,” Phil replied, grinning at yet another similarity between daughter and father.
The group walked on and finally arrived at the chamber room. Sam immediately noted the bluish glow of the wall and the way it curved away from the center. The glowing color of the wall seemed to match the glowing color of the jewel in the medallion. Sam wondered if there was a correlation. When she saw the carvings on the wall, she recognized immediately that it matched the writing in the tablet room at Paititi. Then she saw the hole in the floor of the room where Ackers and his men had blasted their way into the underground cavern. As an archaeologist, the blatant disregard that Dumond and his men showed for this antiquity angered her to no end. She could feel hatred rising inside of her.
“We’ll rappel in,” Ackers said, pushing Sam aside. “Set up the equipment here,” he barked to his men, who quickly responded by opening their equipment bags and removing the nylon ripcord used by mountain climbers. In a quick and fluid movement, one of Ackers’s men disappeared into the blackness, while another belayed his line.
“Ladies first.” Ackers held the line out to Sam.
“Clip in your carabineer here, walk to the edge, and let your weight carry you over,” another mercenary instructed Sam.
Without hesitation, Sam followed the instructions perfectly and soon found herself being lowered into complete darkness, except for the light from the halogen headlamp of the soldier who had gone before her. As she touched the ground, Sam realized that the vertical descent was fifteen to twenty feet. Now she understood how Mike had broken his leg. The rest of the members of the team followed suit with one soldier remaining in the chamber room.
Ackers shined his light in the direction that he and Phil had previously traversed, and Sam immediately saw the footprints. Her father had been down here a day ago and now she was literally following in his footsteps. The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on her.
“This way.”
There was an eeriness to the cavern, the only sound being that of shuffling boots, and the only light came from the headlamps worn by the mercenaries. Sam thought that it would be very easy to become disoriented in this environment.
“Stay in formation,” Ackers barked.
Almost as if to confirm her thinking, Sam occasionally saw an arrow drawn in the dirt floor, pointing back toward the opening in the floor of the chamber room. Her father, never one to leave something to chance, must have drawn them, in case he became disoriented and needed directions back to Mike and Phil. She smiled at the connection she felt with her father at that moment. The group continued on in silence, occasionally passing a tunnel, which crossed their path and veered off into the darkness.
Suddenly, they came to a stop.
“Why are we stopping?” Sam whispered to Phil.
“It’s the chasm,” Phil replied.
At Phil’s reply, Sam was overcome with a wave of emotion. The thought of her father falling into this dark, seemingly endless pit was almost too much to bear. She had to fight back the tears and control her breathing. Now wasn’t the time or place to show emotions.
“Dr. Randall, where should we go from here?” Dumond asked in a sickeningly sweet tone.
“I don’t know. There’s nothing from my father’s research that explains how to find the city.”
“That’s not the answer I want to hear, Professor.” Dumond walked over to one of Ackers’s men, snatched the HK MP5 sub-machine gun from his hand and chambered a round as he walked over to Samantha. “If you want your friend to live, you had better start coming up with some better ideas.” Dumond stopped next to Phil and pointed the barrel of the gun at the side of his head. “The next move is yours, Professor.”
Sam’s heart raced, and her stomach churned. “My father found these ruins, so I know the city must be here, we just need to look more to find it.”
Dumond pushed the gun into Phil’s cheek. “I could search the caverns without you and your friend here. You need to give me a good reason to keep you both alive.”
“Wait, there is something.” Sam had hesitated at first, but she had no choice now. “My father found this.” She unbuttoned the top two buttons of her shirt and removed the medallion from around her neck. In the darkness, she could clearly see the deep blue glow of the medallion. It was growing brighter. Almost like a beacon, letting her know that their destination was much closer than before. Dumond walked over and snatched it from her.
“What is this?”
“It’s a medallion that was taken fro
m the underground city. I’m not sure what it’s for, but I believe it may be some kind of key.”
“A key? For what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Dr. Randall, you disappoint me. You expect me to believe that your father didn’t tell you what this medallion is for?” Dumond walked back over to Phil. “Unfortunately, you leave me no choice.” He raised the gun and took aim.
As he did, a single bullet grazed his cheek. Dumond spun on his heel in the direction of the gunfire. The shot had come from the tunnel veering to the left of the chasm.
“Put your guns down!” barked a deep male voice from the darkness.
Kristoph’s men had fanned out in the darkness and cut off Ackers and his men from the main shaft of the cavern.
“Kristoph?”
“Yes, Dumond, and you had better put your dogs on a leash now, or I’ll have you all killed.”
“So Kristoph, decided you didn’t want to share the spoils with the rest of us? Well, not to worry, one less person means more for the remaining members.”
Unseen in the darkness, Ackers and two of his men had turned off their headlamps and taken offensive positions to lay cover fire for their group. The cavern burst into an orgy of sound, light flashes, and dust, as Ackers and his men unleashed full automatic fire on Kristoph and his team. Instinctively, Sam grabbed Phil by the arm and dragged him to the ground. Without headlamps, the two were concealed in the darkness of the cavern. Sam could hear the whizzing of bullets passing near her and Phil, as she shimmied to the side of the cavern, taking cover behind a large protruding boulder. Phil followed closely behind and arrived by Sam’s side, out of breath and terrified.
“Are you okay? What are we going to do? These guys are trying to kill each other and we’re caught in the middle.”
Peering out from their rocky protection, Sam viewed the unbridled chaos taking place in the cavern. The utter darkness of the cavern served as a backdrop to the mayhem, punctuated by bursts of flames emanating from the various weapons discharged by both groups and from the flailing headlamps and gun-mounted flashlights. The near deafening echo of the gunshots and the waves of dust and dirt kicked up by bullet impacts further muddied the situation. Shrieks of pain and cursing dotted the chaos, creating a perfect storm of anarchy. Trying to focus on finding a way out, Sam realized that she was able to locate the mercenaries by the burst of flames from their guns, and suddenly she was struck by a thought.
The Vilcabamba Prophecy: A Nick Randall Novel Page 10