by Alex Archer
So don’t let it connect, her inner voice told her.
Right. Easier said than done.
Then the cat was upon her and she didn’t have any time for thought, just action.
The jaguar rushed in, closing to within three feet of Annja before skidding to a stop and rearing up on its hind legs, lashing out with its right paw while roaring at her from close range.
Something in the back of Annja’s mind cataloged the cry—the jaguar was the only cat in the western hemisphere that actually roared like a tiger or lion—but the rest of her was entirely focused on the battle unfurling mere inches away.
As one of the cat’s big paws came lashing in, Annja struck out with her sword in turn, cutting a narrow slash across the outside of the cat’s paw.
Sorry, kitty, but it’s not going to be as easy as all that.
As if it heard her, the jaguar snarled, a harsh, rippling cry, and then lashed out again, once, twice, driving Annja backward, forcing her to keep her sword swinging frantically as she sought to keep those paws off her. The cat was trying to corner her against another tree, where it could kill her and then eat her at its leisure.
Annja twisted and turned, striking out with her sword every opportunity that she had, and before long both of them were bleeding from half a dozen minor wounds but neither side giving any inclination of giving up.
Then it happened.
The cat lashed out with its paw again, but this time the blow connected with the flat of Annja’s weapon, ripping it free of her hands and sending it twisting and turning away somewhere into the thick foliage behind her.
If the cat had been capable of smiling, there was no doubt in Annja’s mind that it would have in that moment.
Its yellow eyes gleamed wickedly as it let loose a final roar and charged.
Annja turned and ran directly at the tree behind her, praying she’d be fast enough. The cat closed half the distance in a single bound.
Annja used the first of the ceiba roots that she came to as a springboard, pushing off with her left foot and bouncing to the next on her right, then jumping off with that one to bring her into contact with the trunk of the tree itself.
No sooner had her feet landed against the trunk of the ceiba tree than Annja threw herself backward in a Hail Mary move, flipping end over end as she sailed between the jaguar’s paws even as it reared up, trying to catch her. She felt a claw tear down the outside of her calf, but she dismissed it, concentrating on her landing, knowing she was only going to get one chance.
She arced over the jaguar’s head, hit the ground on her outstretched hands and tucked into a roll to bring her back around facing the cat. As she rolled upright she called her sword, opening her hand and feeling it slap into her palm with reassuring heft.
The cat had already shifted about, following her dive, and it leaped toward her with a stunning force.
Annja knelt there, sword thrust forward, and watched the big cat plunge toward its death, praying it wouldn’t maul her too much in the process.
But the jaguar wasn’t ready to die quite yet.
It had been wounded by the sword once already and recognized it as a threat, so as it dropped toward her the big cat twisted in midleap, pulling the majority of its body out of the path of the blade.
Instead of impaling the cat through the center of its chest, as Annja had planned, the sword took it through the shoulder instead. The cat’s downward momentum forced its body down the length of the blade and it screamed in pain even as Annja went over backward with it atop her, using her feet to buck the beast up and over her head. She heaved it away from her, releasing her sword back into the otherwhere at the same time to avoid amputating the cat’s leg in the process.
Annja rolled over and scrambled to her feet, snatching her sword back from the otherwhere in order to defend herself as the cat hit the ground and landed on its feet.
It turned to face her and for a moment Annja thought it was going to charge a second time, but at the flash of the sword in her hand, the cat apparently decided that discretion was the better part of valor.
It roared one last time and then slunk away into the trees, favoring its injured shoulder.
Annja paused, sword in hand, making sure it wasn’t going to change its mind and come charging back. When it didn’t, she climbed wearily to her feet and returned to Marcos.
Only to find him thrashing in his bonds, his arms and legs kicking weakly while odd choking noises came out of his mouth from behind the gag.
The sound galvanized Annja into action.
She rushed forward to the base of the tree, staring up at Marcos hanging there several feet above her head. It only took a few seconds for her to realize that the ropes holding him to the tree had been cleverly tied to become their own sort of prison and punishment rolled into one. If Marcos struggled, the ropes tied around his neck tightened, making it more difficult to breathe. The more difficult it became to breathe, the more Marcos struggled. It was devious and cruel but extremely effective, and Annja was amazed that the man had managed to hold out this long.
“Hang on, Marcos!” she called up to him. Standing on the highest root, she could only come up to eye level with his boots, but it did put her into striking range of the ropes if she used her sword.
She reared back and was about to call the sword to slash through the bindings nearest to her when something stopped her. She followed the ropes with her eyes, letting her gaze travel over the various lines and knots. That was when she recognized the problem.
If she cut the lower ropes, all of Marcos’s weight would sag against the ropes tied about his neck, finishing the job they’d already started and strangling him to death. She’d have to climb higher and cut the upper ropes first, freeing his neck and eliminating the threat. At that point she could cut through the rest of the ropes once they had figured out how to support Marcos’s big frame.
At this point the sword was just going to be a hindrance, so she sent it away with a thought. She was leaving herself vulnerable if their enemies were still around, but that was a chance she was going to have to take. She couldn’t make it up the tree while holding the sword; she needed both hands for the climb.
She checked to be sure her knife was in its proper place on the sheath on her belt—she was going to need it in just a few minutes to cut Marcos loose—and then grabbed the trunk in front of her and started to climb.
It was slow going; the bark was slick with humidity and there weren’t that many hand-or footholds to make it easy. Only her rock-climbing experience, particularly the skill of finding and sticking to minute holds, kept her from slipping right back down the trunk to where she started. Hand over hand, step after step, she worked her way upward.
She was almost into position to the side of Marcos when she heard Hugo calling her name from nearby.
“Over here!” she cried, and a few moments later Claire and Hugo rushed into the clearing.
“Quick! Support his legs!” Annja directed them. “We need to get the pressure off the ropes before they choke him to death!”
They jumped to do so, clambering up onto the roots just as Annja had before them in order to get high enough to reach Marcos’s legs. While Claire steadied him, Hugo put his back to the tree trunk and tried to guide Marcos’s feet onto his shoulders.
While the other two were getting into position, Annja was in the tree next to Marcos, thinking of a method to get him back down to the ground alive.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t succeeding.
Without any other options available to her, Annja did the only thing she could.
She used her knife to slash through the ropes and watched Marcos tumble forward, landing on the ground in a heap in front of Hugo.
21
It was a good thing Marcos was as tough as an ox. Otherwise, the ordeal might have caused him permanent harm. As it was, he’d be talking in a rattling hiss until his vocal chords recovered and be sporting so many bruises that his body looked as if it had b
een covered in a quilt dyed black and blue.
After rinsing off all the blood and then assessing Marcos’s injuries and overall condition, Claire made the decision to remain there in the camp by the waterfall for an extra day to give Marcos time to rest and recover. Annja didn’t think it was a smart move—as long as the enemy knew their position, they were sitting ducks—but Claire would not be dissuaded. The three of them took turns standing watch, rifle in hand.
Marcos regained consciousness later that morning. He’d come through his experience surprisingly unscathed. A bit of rest and he’d be ready to travel again soon. Annja left him alone to recover for most of the day, but as evening rolled around she slipped inside his tent and asked him if he could remember anything about what had happened.
“Not much,” he told her, his voice a hoary rasp. “Flashes of this and that. I don’t think it will be much help.”
Annja smiled, trying to be encouraging. “Tell me, anyway. Sometimes two seemingly unrelated pieces of information combine to give you the answers you’re looking for almost before you realize it.”
He shrugged and did what she asked.
“I woke up when somebody slapped a sharp-smelling rag over my nose and mouth. Without thinking about it I sucked in some air to yell, which sent whatever they’d soaked the rag with down into my lungs. I started to get dizzy immediately, which I’m sure was the point. I had the sense that there were two, maybe three, guys in the tent with me, holding me down, and then everything went dark.”
Annja wasn’t surprised. She’d assumed that they’d drugged him in some fashion; otherwise, he would have alerted the rest of them.
“When I came to, I was hanging in that tree with those ropes around my neck. They slit the neck of a pig and directed the stream of blood pulsing out of it so that it splashed all over my face and chest. They laughed when I struggled and tried to get away, because every move I made forced the noose tighter about my neck.” Marcos shuddered at the memory.
“Did they say anything to you?” Annja asked.
“Not to me, but they did talk among themselves.”
That caught Annja’s attention. “Did you understand anything they said?”
He shook his head. “Some of it sounded kind of familiar, but most of it was just gibberish.”
Annja was disappointed. She’d been hoping Marcos would confirm her suspicions that it was a rival team trying to drive them off, but he hadn’t seen or heard enough for his information to be of much use to her.
“Any idea who they were?” Marcos asked.
“They were long gone by the time we found you. You can rest easy, though. We’ll be posting a guard and standing watch all night. If they come back, we’ll be ready for them.”
She turned toward the door, intending to leave him to his rest, when he said, “I don’t know what it means, but they said one word several times.”
Annja looked back at him. “And that was?”
“Uthurunku. Whatever that is.”
Annja frowned. “Are you sure? Just like that—uthurunku?”
Marcos nodded. “Is it important?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, carefully keeping her expression neutral. “But at least it gives us a starting point.”
She flashed another smile and then slipped out the door.
Uthurunku.
She knew that word.
Her fascination with archaeology had taken Annja to a lot of places in the world, many of which were the kinds of places that were off the beaten track. Finding someone who spoke English in those areas was often difficult and she’d gotten in the habit of learning a smattering of phrases in the local language while working a dig site. Usually they were simple sayings designed to help her communicate with the locals—hello, goodbye, my name is Annja, that kind of thing. Sometimes they were warnings about dangers lurking nearby. Being fluent in several different languages was certainly useful when amid the culture and etiquette of the big cities, but when you were squatting to have dinner with the Bushmen of the Kalahari or fashioning a mud mask with the Asaro peoples of Papua New Guinea, it was the little phrases that got you by.
Annja had been in Peru, working a dig at Ingapirca, when she’d first heard the word uthurunku. Several of the locals had been hired to help clear back some vegetation at the edge of the forest and Annja had gone with them. They’d mimed the image of a stalking cat and had repeated the word several times.
Uthurunku meant “jaguar” in Quechua, the language of the indigenous peoples of the Andes region of South America. Unlike other indigenous languages, it was still spoken by more than eight million people across the countries of Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Argentina.
Quechua was also the language of the Inca.
First the representations of the death god and now this.
What on earth was going on?
“Did you learn anything?”
Annja spun around, startled by Claire’s sudden presence. She’d been so wrapped up in her thoughts that she hadn’t heard the other woman approach.
“No, not really,” Annja lied, shaking her head. “They drugged him while he was half-asleep, so he really didn’t see anything that could help us.”
Claire glanced at the darkness beginning to gather amid the trees surrounding them and then back at Annja. She shook her head. “I’m worried, Annja. What if Richard ran into the very same people? He couldn’t possibly survive what Marcos just went through.”
“All the more reason to press on as soon as we can,” Annja told her. “Marcos is doing well. I’m sure he’ll be able to travel in the morning. How far are we from our destination?”
“Half a day’s hike, maybe a little more.”
“Then we should have some answers by midday tomorrow. Hang in there, Claire. We’ll know soon enough. I’m sure he’s all right.”
But she wasn’t sure, not really, and as she walked away she wondered just what they had gotten themselves into. The treasure was worth millions and that kind of wealth attracted more than its fair share of unscrupulous people who would stop at nothing to possess it for themselves.
Given the events of that morning, Annja thought the chances of finding Dr. Knowles alive and well were swiftly dwindling. Marcos’s captors had clearly intended for him to perish at the hands of the jaguar they’d lured to his side with the fresh blood from that wild pig, and it wasn’t such a stretch to think that they would have been equally ruthless in dealing with Knowles.
She hoped there was a simple explanation for why Knowles had lost contact with his wife, she really did, but after today, she wasn’t going to put money on it.
* * *
THANKFULLY, THE NIGHT PASSED without incident and by midmorning Marcos announced that he felt fit enough to travel. They quickly broke camp, packed their gear and then pulled out the map in order to check their position relative to that of their destination.
When asked about the details of their destination, Claire pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to Annja. The paper was an email, sent by Dr. Knowles, noting the discovery of an “iron-banded sea chest” inside a “narrow cave that showed signs of previous excavation.” The email gave GPS coordinates for the specific location and noted that the team was planning to begin excavating the rear of the cave the morning after the email was sent.
Annja memorized the coordinates and was about to hand the email back to Claire when the header caught her attention. She let her gaze flick over it and saw that the email had not been sent to Claire, but rather to a Matt Davis at the Science Channel. For a moment she was confused—Who is Matt Davis? Why wasn’t the email sent to Claire?—but then realized that the Science Channel, a cable television channel about twice the size of her own, had probably financed Knowles’s expedition. Knowles’s email was probably just one of the many progress updates required by such an agreement. Heaven knew she’d made enough of them herself over the years.
She made note of the name.
If someone had leaked
information about Knowles’s expedition, then Davis was as much a possible source for that as anyone else at this point. There was nothing she could do about it right now, but she had every intention of tracking down that leak when all was said and done.
Satisfied that they were literally on the right track, Annja led the way into the jungle once more. Gone was the casual atmosphere that had governed their first day of travel. Now all of them were constantly checking the jungle around them, knowing their enemies were out there, somewhere, and not wanting to be surprised a second time.
Annja concentrated on getting the group where they needed to go with a minimum of delay.
Their course took them out of the lowland jungle and into an area of slightly higher elevation away from the coast as they began to make their way into the foothills leading to Mount Yglesias on the far side of the island.
Several times during the morning’s journey they came to places where the trail split off in different directions and each time Annja found Knowles’s trademark K carved into a nearby tree or scratched on a rock. Annja knew their enemies might have noticed the markings and might have gone so far as to alter them in an attempt to throw them off the trail, so she made a point of checking each one against the GPS signal to ensure that they were always accurate.
Better safe than sorry.
They took a short break to replenish the fluids they were losing in the high humidity and then pushed on. The sooner they reached their destination, the sooner their questions would be answered.
Or so they thought.
Reality, however, had another surprise in store for them.
Knowles and his team had made camp just south of a long, winding ridgeline of dark rock that rose out of the jungle like the blade of a knife, neatly bisecting the island in two. They had cut a clearing out of the undergrowth and erected their tents in three orderly rows with wide footpaths between and a communal mess tent at the far end.
Annja was surprised. Most expedition camps were disorderly affairs, with tents erected hither and yon for no particular reason at all. It was almost as if, in reaction to the necessary order and precision of their daily work, the archaeologists needed an outlet for the chaotic side of their souls and a haphazard camp was one way of allowing for that.