He came to a reinforced steel door at the end of the tunnel — most certainly not an original feature of the temple. Stark pressed his back up against the old stone and listened at the door. No sounds filtered through.
There was no handle, so he felt about for a latch or pressure point; there had to be a way to open it from this side.
For one sickening moment he thought not, then his fingers found the cracks in the stone around the frame, and in turn the latch that released the door. He eased it open, expecting the slow creak to announce his arrival, but it opened silently on well-greased hinges. On the other side of the door he was presented with more passageway, much like the 100 yards or so of cold stone he had just walked along. There were no turnings. He was actually doing an Alice in reverse and going back up the rabbit hole. This was their escape route should the authorities ever raid the compound.
It made sense to have a back door, and the odds of finding a naturally occurring one — or being the beneficiary of an historical one — were slim to non-existent.
He felt out the smooth walls. Every so often he found the rough edges left behind by blasting caps from where the passage had been opened up. It was most definitely man-made, and not too old, either.
He followed it to its end without incident.
TWENTY-FOUR
It took Abby a few minutes to realise she was warming a dead man.
She hadn’t noticed the precise moment when Andy Blaine had stopped shivering, or the last sigh that escaped his lips. At least not consciously. She felt the cold of him against her hands, and reached up to his neck to feel for a pulse, knowing even as she did that it wouldn’t be there.
He had died to save her.
She felt small then, weighed down by the burden of knowing she had to live for two.
“Damn it,” she said. Her eyes stung with unshed tears. She felt a tightness in her chest.
Abby rolled away from the dead man. His blankets were sodden with blood. She looked at his face in the striated darkness, dawn’s first blush beginning to filter through the canopy of leaves. He wasn’t handsome or heroic to look at, just a normal man, but he was her hero. She placed a soft kiss on his forehead and closed his eyes.
Then she banged on the partition between the cage and the driver’s cab, trying to catch their attention. Stephen glanced back at her. He read her face and leaned over, telling Lucas to pull over. The Land Rover slowed to a stop. Abby clambered back out over the tailgate and hugged Lucas.
“I’m sorry,” she said, wanting to say so much more — that it was her fault, that she owed him her life — but none of that would come out. So she said all she could say. “I’m so sorry.”
Lucas hugged her back. He understood.
“Soldiers die,” he said, as though stating some great universal truth. “He fell in the line of duty, saving a beautiful woman. There are worse ways to go.”
She shrugged, not convinced but not willing to argue.
After drawing the cover up over Blaine’s face, she joined Connor and Genaro up front in the other Land Rover which had pulled over behind them. The back was filled with camping gear.
“Connor? Where’s the radio?”
Connor looked like the Wicked Witch of the West, sweat plastered to his scalp, skin pasty-white. All he needed to do to complete the illusion was beg her to help him because he was melting. He passed her the handset — the only one that had survived the mêlée back in the rainforest — and was alarmed to find that it had been turned off the entire time.
Abby radioed Cutter to let him know that Blaine had died before they had made it even halfway back to Cuzco.
That’s when she learned about Jenny and the poacher’s attack, and the fact that Cutter’s Land Rover was out of commission.
“We need you guys to come pick us up. Nando and I aren’t far from the ruined temple. A couple of hours walk and it’s all done. We’ll get the Thylacosmilus back into the Plio-Pleistocene, and then we’ll deal with this other thing, whatever it is.” She wasn’t certain what he meant by the “other thing”, but decided to let it slide until later.
“We’re coming to collect you, so just wait there,” she said. “Connor’s got the anomaly detector, and you’ll be flailing around in the dark without us. But what makes you think the anomaly is in this ruined temple?”
“It’s where it all began,” Cutter explained. “Cam and Jaime were first attacked there, and it’s where Cam saw the diamonds in the sky.”
“But it wasn’t there when they went back, was it? That’s what Jenny said.”
“It’s the only place we know for sure there was an anomaly, so it’s where we have to start. Maybe it moved; maybe it closed. Connor will be able to tell for certain. If it closed for good we’ve got no choice but to kill the creatures. If it didn’t maybe we can get them home.”
“Understood. We’re on our way.”
They collected Cutter and Nando and drove to the rendezvous point. Both Cutter and the ranger were battered and bruised, wearing the effects of the crash on their faces. Nando had a long gash down his right cheek that seemed to extend his smile all the way to his ear. Cutter had a nasty purple bruise and swelling beneath his left eye, as well as a series of small cuts where the glass had showered across his face.
There were other wounds Abby couldn’t see, but knew were there from the way the men carried themselves. The other Land Rover was already waiting, Stephen and Lucas leaning against the vehicle. Both looked the worse for the heat and lack of sleep.
Cutter was already out of the car and talking to the two men as she approached, giving orders. Battered or not, it was good to see him back in control. She had been worried about him. He still appeared haunted, but as much by the lack of sleep as anything else. They had all suffered over the last few days, trying to function off the fumes of alertness.
The sun was edging up over the high peaks, pulling apart the thinnest wisps of mist as it gave the shepherds of the Andes plenty of warning. Even that little hint of sun was enough to take the chill off the morning. In less than an hour it would be unbearable again. The extremes of day and night were unlike anything she had ever experienced.
She checked her watch and wished she hadn’t — it told her what she felt in her weary bones. She had been awake for twenty-eight hours straight. And now she was about to trek into the unknown, to face creatures that had already killed so many, and not just faceless villagers. They had lost two members of their team. She stretched, yawning, and knuckled the need for sleep out of her eyes. She looked up at the sky, urging it to wake her up.
By the time she arrived at the other Land Rover, Cutter was already explaining to the assembled group about the theory concerning the strange scents, and their relationship to the unnatural behaviour of the Thylacosmilus. It sounded outrageous, yet it explained so much of what had happened.
“This thing, whatever it is, is far from stupid. It’s got a dominant personality. Like men who use dogs to hunt, giving them the scent of their quarry, it has asserted its will on the pack of Thylacosmilus. It’s steering them by scent. Back at the settlement you all smelled it, right? Something out of place? Coffee, vanilla, fish, all of these really strong, really pungent odours. It’s using pheromones to communicate with the Thylacosmilus, using them like hounds to track its quarry. And as soon as we go in there, we’re going to be its quarry. I can’t make myself any clearer. Smell something wrong, something incredibly out of place, and you can bet our predator is nearby, playing master of the hunt.”
“What about the poachers?” Lucas asked.
“We’ll worry about them when we have to. Hopefully Stark is good to his word, and we won’t have to deal with them. Right now I think we’ve got enough to worry about.”
Abby could tell that there was a great deal he wasn’t saying — most likely concern for Jenny — but to his credit he focused on their current task.
She looked up toward the peaks, and the outline of the temple visible in the rising sun
. Even from ten kilometres away, it was an awe-inspiring sight. She could imagine it all those years ago, the Incas making their pilgrimage to the holy place, watching the sun break free of the clouds to bless the stones with its radiance.
“Cutter?” she said, turning to face him.
“What, Abby?”
“When you say out-of-place smells, do you mean things like sulphur and ammonia?” she said, breathing in so deeply that even the faint traces that lingered brought a tear to her eyes.
Cutter nodded.
“It was here before us. I don’t know what the individual odours mean, but I don’t think the presence of any of them is particularly positive, given what we’re dealing with.”
Back at the tailgate of the first Land Rover, Lucas cracked the seals on one of the steel coffins and opened it to reveal a high velocity rifle that had been modified to fire tranquilliser darts. Abby had dosed up the ketamine solution, making it potent enough to bring down an elephant. He pocketed a magazine with three extra darts in it, muttering something about feeling like a date rapist.
Connor slapped him on the back and said “Welcome to my world... No, er, that didn’t come out right. I mean...”
“Don’t worry about it, kid. Let’s go find you a date, shall we?” The SAS man grinned despite his obvious distress at the death of his colleague and close friend. The grief would come, Abby was certain, but only when he allowed it, and on his terms.
“You’ll need a bigger gun,” she said, wandering over to join them as they were gearing up.
Connor tested the anomaly detector, hearing that faint burr of static that said something was definitely active. When they were close enough it would emit that tell-tale interference, pinpointing the anomaly to within about 100 metres. It would be a vital piece of kit, especially if they needed to go underground.
She claimed herself a tranquilliser pistol with a thick grip, and the rest of the group followed suit. It had a two-dart chamber with gas-propulsion. Each dart fired off a separate trigger mechanism and would pierce a hide at thirty metres. She took a pair of thermal-imaging goggles and hung them around her neck.
“Right,” Cutter said, “pass me a knife, and then someone give me a hand getting the spare out of the back.”
Lucas did as he was asked, handing it over hilt first while Connor and Stephen wrestled with the spare tyre. They heaved it out from beneath the equipment coffin and rolled it toward Cutter. The Professor knelt, driving the blade hilt-deep into the rubber, and hacked his way through it, cutting the tyre into strips.
“Assuming the beast is using pheromones to direct the Thylacosmilus, we’ve got to inhibit them. Pheromones are essentially saturated hydrocarbon chains. In animals, they’re detected by using the vomeronasal organ, which lies between the nose and mouth and is the first stage of the accessory olfactory system. It’s how we smell things. Short of wishing a bad case of the flu on the pouch-blades, the next best thing is to introduce something into the air that will interfere with their breathing in and responding to the pheromones.
“Burning rubber releases a natural isoprenoid. There are several natural isoprenoids — they’re looking into them as pesticides. In Northern California they use a particular isoprenoid formed from the chlorophyl of leaves to block the sex pheromone of moths. Left unchecked, the moths could decimate the forestry up there. So they spray the air in the orchards and around the forests, putting a serious damper on the moth’s love life. We’re doing the same here. The smell the rubber gives off when it’s burning acts as an inhibitor. Get enough of it in the air, and it’ll interfere with the pheromones the beast is using to control the Thylacosmilus.”
Abby took a bandana from her pocket and fastened it around her forehead to keep her hair back. Beside her stood the two rangers — Nando was checking the batteries in the torches, while Genaro was siphoning off the petrol from one of the three Land Rovers and using it to fill small plastic phials. When he was done he gave one to each of them and said simply, “To light the rubber. It won’t burn well without some sort of reagent.”
“What exactly can this creature do? I mean with these pheromones? How well can it communicate?” Abby asked.
“I don’t know,” Cutter said. “This isn’t really an exact science. We do know that there are a dozen different types of pheromone at least: aggregation pheromones, arousal ones, primers that trigger some kind of change in the development of events, sex pheromones to lure a mate, while certain insects such as ants use them to mark a trail.”
“And to attack?”
“And to attack,” Cutter confirmed.
Abby took a flare pistol and slipped it into the waistband of her shorts, and pocketed a lighter. She suggested that the others do the same. All of the gasoline and rubber in the world would be useless without something to light it.
TWENTY-FIVE
Stark heard voices in the dark.
They were speaking low, in urgent whispers.
He pressed himself up against the cold stone of the wall and strained to listen.
Slow, measured footsteps moved toward him, the sound swelling to fill the passageway. Thirty yards from where he lurked, the passage opened out into a brightly lit area. There were three voices that he could distinguish, all male. They were speaking in English, but none of them were native speakers; there was a stilted edge to their words, as though they were filtering them through a second layer of thought processes. One voice had that recognisably sharp Germanic edge to it. The others might have been Italian or Hispanic — it was difficult to say without seeing the speakers.
He had no intention of stepping out into the light.
Not yet.
There was some urgency to their conversation.
He understood why a moment later, when he heard the female voice demanding to talk to their leader.
“The government will find out about this, mark my words. You don’t want to do this. Let me go now, and I will talk to them for you. I will tell them that you helped me.”
They laughed at her, and he understood their arrogance. There was nothing in the threat to frighten them — in this twisted world they had nothing to fear. Eberhardt owned the government.
He almost pitied them the rude awakening they were about to get.
It was so typical of the woman to act as though she was trying to negotiate First Contact. Next she’d be trying to sweet talk them, offering them special dispensations with the British government, promising to grease a few wheels for their boss. Stark couldn’t help but admire Jenny Lewis. There was something about her. He could certainly see what drew Cutter like a helpless moth to her flame. Not that the Professor was ever open about it. The man was so uptight around her it was almost funny.
The chatter continued. They seemed to be arguing about what the hell they were supposed to do with her.
Stark had a few suggestions, but he thought it wise to keep them to himself for the moment, at least.
There was movement. They were headed his way.
Stark lowered himself, offering as small a target as he could, then raised the MP5, but didn’t yet fire.
The sub-machine gun had a bastard of a kick to it, but considering it could unload eight hundred rounds in a minute, that was no surprise. The magazine had thirty rounds in it. That was more than enough to cut a man in half.
Line ‘em up and knock ‘em down, he thought, biding his time.
He watched the shadows move across his line of sight.
Still he didn’t squeeze the trigger.
His palms were clammy with cold sweat, his body pumping with endorphins. A part of the soldier hated himself for what he was about to do, but another part of him revelled in it. This was what he did. Others built monuments to gods, shot for the moon, found cures to big diseases with little names. Others helped. He killed. It was his gift.
He watched.
He waited.
And then he stepped out, when the voices were closest together. He walked slowly, keeping his pace mea
sured so that his footsteps wouldn’t betray him. He turned the corner and unloaded the entire clip in a scything line that cut across the centre of the guardroom in half a second. It was over as quickly as that. Three men whose names he didn’t know lay in pools of maroon at his feet, their weapons impotent against the bringer of death.
A heartbeat later, the woman screamed. Then as quickly as she had begun, she stopped.
“Keep quiet,” he rasped, his voice carrying across the shocking silence that travelled in the wake of the bullets.
“Who’s there?” she called out.
“Stark. Now be quiet, unless you want to get us both killed.”
This time she did as she was told.
He quickly checked to make sure the three men were as dead as they looked, then double checked the exits to be sure he wasn’t in for any unpleasant surprises as he went in search of the woman. There were two more passages that led off the central area, one he assumed went down to whatever they were using for a holding cell, the other up toward the main compound. He found a set of keys on the smallest of the three men and took them.
“Eeny meany,” Stark muttered, picking the second of the two corridors. He had a fifty-fifty chance that Jenny waited at the end of the one he chose.
It was all a numbers game. The German had said Eberhardt had nine men at the compound. He’d taken out four, then there was the gate keeper. That meant four more remained. He tossed aside the MP5, drew the Browning, and racked it, chambering a round.
The passage he followed led to a series of cages. It obviously served as some sort of storage pen for the animals they brought in from the forest. He found Jenny hunched up in one of the cages. She looked as though she’d been dragged through Hell kicking and screaming. Her usually coiffured hair was dishevelled and her make-up smeared. There was blood and bruising on the side of her face and her blouse had been torn to bare a badly bruised shoulder. Her skin was covered in cuts and shallow scratches, but none of the physical damage was all that worrying. It was the pain behind her eyes that concerned him the most — the damage that couldn’t be seen.
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