She laid her hand on Braydon’s forehead. Despite the air-cooled water saturating his clothes, he was burning up. He struggled to sit up. She tried to hold him down, but his strength was surprising.
He gripped her arm, but weakly. “Ghost tribe,” he said, forcing his lips to form the words. “Behind those trees.”
She spun around, saw only trees, menacing looking trees, heavy with vines, but rooted to the ground. Braydon could be hallucinating, like Liam had, or he had a better grip on reality than she did. The poison was moving fast through his system. Maybe that promise God had made wasn’t God promising anything after all. The high fever could kill quickly. She pried his hand away. “The shaman said the antidote plant grew along the river bank,” she said. “I’m heading upstream.” She grabbed her canteen out of her pack and splashed against the tepid current. The fleeting feeling of overwhelming joy in the presence of the Breastplate was darkened by an equal sense of dread, like a dark cloud blocking out the sun. Phantoms, she could feel them, watched her, and these were no heavenly apparitions.
She had faith, all right, in history, but the dam had changed the river’s course. Man’s mucking about with nature could have destroyed the delicate microcosm of the antidote plant. It wouldn’t be the first time that man playing god had ended badly. She ducked beneath an overhanging vine, mossy fingers grabbing for the water’s surface. An arrow of sun pierced the bank ahead. Around the bend, a yellow bloom, nearly hidden in the green. She rushed to it, a bed of poppies, piercing up out of the mossy groundcover.
Quickly, she unscrewed the cap of her canteen, dumped its contents, and plunged it into the warm stream waters. Air bubbled up as the clear water displaced it. She hurried back to Braydon and held the canteen to his trembling lips. He took a swallow, coughed. She steadied him, searching his eyes for the focus of regained lucidity. Gabriella said the results should be immediate. It had to work. They hadn’t come this far to lose now. Braydon grabbed for the canteen. He drank more. He pushed it away, the water sloshing out the top. His eyes were wide, as if evil flanked them from every dark shadow. “Leave me,” he said. “Get the antidote plant. Get out of here. Climb up to the Demon’s Wings. Donohue will see you there, airlift you out. It’s your only chance. I’ll hold them off as long as I can.”
“We’re leaving together,” she said.
“They’re surrounding us, positioning to attack.”
She peered into the dense vegetation and shadows. She could see no human, no movement beyond the wind rustling the leaves. But, after the past three days, if Braydon said they were out there, she believed him, poison or no poison. She pressed the Glock into his hand.
She raced upriver, slipping on the slick vegetation hidden by the water as she rounded the bend. She fell upon the poppies, grabbed a stalk, but it was thick, fibrous, impossible to snap off. She grabbed the pilot’s survival knife from its sheath. With the serrated blade, she quickly sawed off six bulbous seed pods and shoved them into the sack. She snatched a handful of leaves, packed them in around the pods. Then she dug into the ground around a mature, flowering poppy. The soil was moist and loose but the roots reached deep into the ground. Too much time was passing. She pried away a stone, its sharp edges scraping her fingers. The earth emitted a primeval odor as she violated the pristine ground. She yanked the last tendrils of the roots clinging desperately to the soil and stuffed the plant into her sack, tugging the drawstring closed.
A deathly quiet had fallen around her. The only sound was her splashing and the hammering of her heart as she rushed back to Braydon. She stopped, the water coursing around her ankles. He was gone. Only the impression he had left behind in the crushed vegetation remained. The ghost tribe could have attacked, dragged him away. Impossible. Braydon at least would have got off a shot.
She crept out of the river. Keeping low, she hurried to the shallow pool against the temple wall. Braydon was standing there, at its bank, to her right. His face was flushed, but his legs were steady. The antidote was working. But he wasn’t alone. Contreras dropped down from the hole in the temple wall, splashing into the shallow pool. He wore the Breastplate.
Contreras stood unsteadily. The water rippled around his legs. His white robe, bloody and tattered, undulated like snakes slithering from his knees. He raised his hands aloft, the Breastplate magnificent and gleaming golden even in the gloom of the dense forest. The gemstones sparkled and flared. He breathed in deeply. A grimace of ecstasy contorted his face. “And he shewed me a pure river of water of life,” he shouted, “clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.”
“You got the antidote plant?” Braydon asked her.
“In the bag,” she said.
Braydon staggered. The antidote’s cure was immediate, but certainly not able to help his other wounds and pure exhaustion. “Then we got what we came here for,” he said. His eyes scanned the perimeter of the shallow pool. From the shadows, they materialized. The ghost tribe. Men, naked except for loin cloths and streaks of body paint, like skeleton bones, white against their dark skin. Half of them raised their blowguns to their mouths. The others stretched arrows back, taut in their bows.
Blood pounded in Christa’s ears. She reached for the pilot survival knife at her hip. Braydon laid his hand over hers, stopping her. “Only way out of this one, is diversion and retreat,” he said. “Priority one is getting that antidote out.”
Contreras squinted. He swiped the blood from his eyes. He closed one eye, opened the other wide. “You are my people,” he shouted. “My Adams. This is the genesis of our new world.”
The Indians swiveled toward him, targeting him with their blowguns and arrows. As the first circle of the ghost tribe closed in, more emerged from the shadows. But the ghost tribe was closing their circle in front of her and Braydon, as if they were just another tree on the edge of the pool. “They’re not after us,” she whispered. Her fingers flew to the El Dorado pendant around her neck. “I’m wearing the El Dorado talisman.”
“More likely what you’re not wearing. They’ll never let that Breastplate go beyond the temple walls.”
“I bring you peace, my people,” said Contreras. “I bring you the cure for your village. I fulfill my ancestor’s promise.” He raised his arms, lolling his head from side to side. “Mother!” he wailed. “I did this for you! I am here, Baltasar. Mother, tell me I have earned your forgiveness.”
“I almost feel sorry for the man,” Braydon said.
“No matter what he’s done, we can’t just stand by and watch,” said Christa. “They’ll kill Contreras.”
“Brutally,” said Braydon, “and I don’t intend to stand by. I intend to get us out of here.”
“Contreras,” she called out. “Take off the Breastplate. It’s the only thing that might save you.”
He looked around wildly. He couldn’t see them. “Save me,” he shouted. “From my moment of triumph? Never.”
A guttural wail rose from the inner circle of the ghost tribe. They moved as one, a mighty predator pouncing for the kill. The intensity of their anger, the force of their determination blew across the pool like a hot gust.
“Now!” Braydon yelled. He grabbed her hand, pulled her towards the steep slope that was once the temple wall. He pushed her ahead of him. “Climb up to the Demon’s Wings. When they’re done with him, they’ll come after us!”
She struggled and stumbled upwards, slipping on the slick moss, grasping at rough vines and roots. Contreras’s screams of agony and the murderous howls of ghost tribe filled the forest. The sounds of murder drove the animals, insects and birds into a frenzy. The ground, the air, everything was alive, moving, panicking.
Braydon stumbled behind her. He strove to gain ground, his energy flagging. “Keep moving,” he yelled to her. Below, the shallow pool was a mass of naked backs and arms and fists, rising and pounding down. Tendrils of red blood crept through the clear, blue water. The motion paused, then, as one, the ghost tribe looked up. They let out a h
orrifying howl, and surged towards the slope.
The ground shuddered violently beneath her. She flung herself down and grabbed onto a vine with all her strength to keep from being thrown down the hill and into the hands of the angry tribe. The very earth was disintegrating. Braydon’s hand pressed on her back. “Hurry,” he said. “The temple’s collapsing.”
The slope to their left exploded into an avalanche of dirt and stone. A huge tree heeled, groaned and toppled with a thunderous crash. She glanced down. The ghost tribe scrambled closer, dodging granite blocks that crashed downwards. On the eastern horizon, the crest of the volcano appeared above the tree line. Its black smoke plume was alive with lightning. It roared, a primitive beast clamoring to destroy the world.
Another sound filtered through the percussive bursts of destruction, an unnatural rhythm, a thumping. The Blackhawk! It rose above the Demon’s Wings from the west side of the pass. Donohue was perched at the open door, signaling to them, beckoning them, shouting something she couldn’t hear over the din.
She and Braydon fought their way up the hill, the wash from the rotors gusting down on them. The detritus swirled around her stinging her eyes. Soil gave way to the curved sheer granite of the rock outcropping. She clung on desperately as the earth jolted beneath her. Her palms scraped against the rough rock. The chopper’s skid touched down. She lunged for it. The ground lurched violently. Braydon’s arms embraced her from behind. Donohue’s hands grasped her wrists, his grip firm, crushing. She planted her feet on the rock and pushed as Donohue hoisted her into the chopper bay. Her knees slammed with a clang onto the hard steel. She quickly twisted around, grabbed Braydon’s hand. Donohue grabbed the other. They yanked together. Braydon dove into the chopper.
“Go!” Donohue yelled. The chopper bolted up. Blowdarts and arrows pinged off its metal skin.
As the chopper banked, she clung onto a handhold. Below was total destruction. The entire temple was collapsing beneath the hillside that had buried and hid it centuries ago. Men, dirt, rocks and trees tumbled into the shallow pool, burying it in a mountain of rubble, Contreras and the Breastplate obliterated beneath it.
“The Breastplate,” Donohue yelled above the roar of the chopper. “Where is it?”
“Gone,” she yelled back, pointing to the rocks still piling onto Contreras’s tomb. “Buried.” She held up the canvas sack. “I’ve got the antidote plant.”
Donohue nodded, but, even as the chopper rose higher, his eyes stayed focused on the hell below.
DAY 6
CHAPTER 69
“Baltasar Contreras is dead,” Christa said, more a question than a statement of fact. Braydon swerved around another smoldering taxi as he sped the Humvee down a vacant, deserted Fifth Avenue. She repeated that in her head. They were driving a Humvee down Fifth Avenue. “This is real. Isn’t it?”
“He is dead,” Braydon confirmed. “This is real.” He eyed the bare-chested maniac in torn jeans howling at the twilight. “The National Guard is policing the curfew, distributing the antidote. They’ll track down the last stragglers.”
She had never liked the unnaturalness of the city, the scraggly trees sprouting from squares of earth cut out of the pavement, the sky only seen as a backdrop to synthetic canyons of steel, glass, and stone. For her, the people that coursed through the city’s automaton body like blood through its veins gave it life and meaning. Without them, the city was a dead hulk, not a testament to what man could build, but to what he could destroy.
She lowered the window, despite the raw chill, but heard only sirens, an occasional wailing, and the wind whining though the streets, whipping the detritus of the riots with the acrid stench of burning tires. “How many dead?”
“Too many.”
“But Daniel is alive,” she said. “That text Daniel sent me, telling me to meet him here. It’s not some Machiavellian move from the grave by Contreras.”
“You said it, not me,” he said. “But Contreras didn’t plan for this one, not this time. I would have liked some back-up, and a fully loaded P-90, but at least we got use of the Humvee.”
“You don’t need an automatic weapon.” She had earned a degree in weapons talk in the past few days. “We’re meeting Daniel.”
“That is a non sequitur.”
Braydon was as stubborn as he was spent. She could tell by the glaze in his eyes that he was barely lucid through the constant pain of his wounds. They had both collapsed with sheer exhaustion on the military jet back to New York from Colombia, but it was like a drop of water to a man dying of thirst. It only gave them enough to survive through the next ordeal, maybe. She wasn’t thinking straight, and he wasn’t either. Except he was armed with a pistol. “When we get to Saint Patrick’s, I should go in alone,” she said. “If he is affected by the poison, you might spook him.”
One steady look from Braydon told her it wasn’t even worth pursuing that argument. “You mean I might shoot him,” he said. “I told you I won’t unless he gives me no choice. You are not going in alone. End of argument.”
The Humvee blasted aside a big screen television that looters had abandoned in the street. She braced her hand against the dashboard as Braydon ran the Humvee up over the curb onto the wide sidewalk in front of the cathedral and threw it into park. Across Fifth, the statue of Atlas relentlessly shouldered the burden of the armillary sphere. Graffiti had been spraypainted on his magnificent marble base. It read, “REPENT OR DIE!”
Braydon slipped his handgun from its holster, checked the bullets in the clip, and chambered one. He nodded his chin towards the graffiti. “We’re not going to,” he said.
“Repent?” she asked. “Or die?”
“Neither,” he said. “Not here, not now, and not at the hands of Daniel Dubler.” He thrust open the door and leaped down.
She followed, rushing to catch him as he bound up the steps to Saint Patrick’s massive bronze doors. “Daniel didn’t betray us,” she said. “If he went to Contreras, he risked his life to help us. Now we have to help him.” She grabbed his shoulder. “Daniel won’t hurt me,” she pressed. She didn’t want to say these next words, for a lot of reasons. “He loves me.”
Braydon hesitated. He, too, had trouble forcing the words. “Another non sequitur,” he said finally. He heaved open the door and entered the cathedral, gun first.
She heard a distant voice lofting through the stone cathedral walls as they crept from the vestibule into the massive nave. “Latin,” she whispered to Braydon. They crouched behind the bank of red votive lights, all of them lit, all still flickering, prayers being sent to God on wisps of smoke and hope. The overwhelming love and joy she had felt in the temple chamber in the presence of the restored Breastplate felt much further than half a world away.
They approached the Lady Chapel. Daniel had texted her to meet him there. At first, she was thrilled that he was alive. Now it scared her. In a crouching run, Braydon made his way quickly down the length of the nave, stopping at the Pieta, the last bend before the Lady Chapel at the far end of the cathedral.
She could only make out the language, the intonations, not all the words, but enough. “It’s Daniel. I think he’s saying a mass,” she said, crouching next to Braydon, “a requiem.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “A mass for the dead.”
“Come!” the voice called out in English, shouting from the altar of the Lady Chapel, the word echoing down the rows of empty pews.
“Don’t do it, Braydon!” A second male voice. “Get out of here!” Followed by a scream of agony.
Braydon hunched his shoulders. His face turned ashen. “Damn it. That’s O’Malley. Dubler’s got him.”
One look at Braydon’s eyes was all it took. He wouldn’t hesitate to kill Daniel. She pushed away from him. He grabbed for her, called her name in an urgent whisper. She sprinted the distance to the Lady Chapel. She stopped at the far end of the pews. Father O’Malley lay unconscious on the floor in front of the altar, his cassock torn from one shoulder. His bloody handprint str
eaked across the mosaic on the front of the altar, smearing the angel announcing to Mary that she would bear the son of God.
She didn’t know what that creature was standing behind the altar of the Lady Chapel, but it was not Daniel Dubler. He was wearing Daniel’s jeans and tweed sport coat, but he was covered in dark, loamy soil and smelled of decaying leaves. She had to take the chance that his inner core, his soul, could still be in there, buried, not yet dead. “I’m glad you’re alive, Daniel,” she tried lamely. O’Malley groaned, tried to lift himself, and collapsed. She rushed to the fallen priest. She crouched by his side.
A sudden force yanked her back and upwards. The press of an arm against her neck choked out a scream. She elbowed the fleshy part of Daniel’s gut and kicked the unyielding marble of the altar. Daniel was preternaturally strong, with poison, with madness. “Daniel, stop!” she yelled. Daniel swatted her, hard, on the side of her head. She felt her arms being pulled upwards, then cold steel around her wrists, and an ominous clicking sound.
Daniel’s dirt and sweat-streaked face closed in on hers. “You won’t leave me again,” he said.
Her arms were cruelly stretched, wrists handcuffed to a chain. The chain was coiled like a snake around the feet of the ivory Mary statue. “Daniel, what have they done to you?”
“God willed it,” he said, his voice powerful. His eyes focused on hers, softened a moment. “Contreras’s men were burying me alive. I called out to Our Lord. They laughed. Like demons they laughed as the storm raged through the forest around us.”
“I got the antidote, Daniel,” she said. “I’ve got a vial here, for you, in my pocket.” She pointed with her chin.
“God smote them, Christa. Even as they flung the earth on me, God flung a lightning bolt from heaven. It castrated the oak that was to be my tombstone, crashing it to the ground. One of the men was crushed. The other fled. God saved me, Christa. For this.” He spread his hands outward, looking down upon the altar. A laptop computer, not a silver chalice, sat on it. He opened it. The screen glowed blue on his face as it hummed to life.
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