Chase Baker and the Golden Condor: (A Chase Baker Thriller Series No. 2)

by Vincent Zandri

“Exactly,” I say, “which makes them hard to track. But if they are onto us and our plan to uncover the aircraft, my guess is they will want it as much as we do.”

  “What the hell would they do with an ancient aircraft?” Rodney asks. “I’m not even sure what we’re going to do with the damn thing, if the damn thing is indeed there.”

  “Now you tell us,” Leslie says, making a smirk. “Thought you could fly anything, Rod?”

  “Listen,” I go on, “a find of that magnitude would solidly place Tupac back on the map as a world terrorist player. The Peruvian government would have no choice but to give in to their demands or else risk losing the one piece of evidence that not only proves the ancients possessed the knowledge of flight, but that intelligent life has existed in the universe for thousands, perhaps millions of years. The entire world would take notice of them. Fear them. Give into them. Obey them.”

  “Why would they want to kill us if they want the aircraft?” Leslie points out. “Wouldn’t they want to let us live long enough for us to find it for them?”

  “She’s got a point,” Rodney says. “We’ve been fighting for our lives since we stepped into the jungle eight hours ago. It’s pretty amazing we’re still alive.”

  I set down the now half-empty bag of beef stroganoff onto the bare earth, stare into the fire.

  “Here’s my no bullshit assessment: My guess is that we should indeed be dead right now. That whoever is behind the killing, be it Tupac or somebody else, knows enough to let a few of us live.”

  “That way we lead them to the aircraft,” Rodney intuits.

  “Exactly,” I say.

  The big man cocks his head, purses his lips. “Those hostiles sure had me convinced they wanted to put an arrow through my head.”

  “I’m just giving you an assessment of the situation,” I say. “I could be dead wrong.”

  “Nice choice of words, trailblazer. How will we know if said assessment is correct?”

  “If we live through the night, it will be correct. But if we die, I’m wrong.” I get up from the ground, brush the soil off my cargo pants, toss what’s left of my stroganoff into a plastic garbage bag. “I’ll take first watch,” I say.

  With that, I step away from the fire and into a forbidden darkness.

  27.

  I choose to stand, rather than sit. That way I can be sure of staying awake. Staring out into the eternal darkness of the rainforest, I use my ears more than my vision, which is useless. I can only wonder if I’m being watched by the men responsible for killing Carlos and for crucifying those three guides. My guess is that I am. It confirms my suspicions for me: They need us. Need me anyway, to show them the way to the aircraft.

  Raising my right hand, I pat the pocket on my bush jacket that contains Keogh II’s digitally enhanced map. Without it, I’m a dead man. We’re all dead.

  Question is, how do the Tupac Amaru know we have such a map? How do they know about our expedition? About the aircraft? How do they know the purpose of our mission in the first place?

  The two men sitting in the Jeep earlier…They must be Tupac and what’s more, they were waiting for us when we landed this morning in the Sacred Valley. Somebody had to have tipped them off. But who and how? Keogh III doesn’t seem the type to take security measures for granted. If the Tupac knew about this mission prior to our arriving, then it had to be an inside job by someone who has no problem with making a deal with the devil. But who exactly? Carlos? Rodney? Carlos is dead, leaving only Rodney. It’s possible I could confront him about the situation. But then, maybe the better thing to do is to hold off and let things play out. Either way, I plan on locating that aircraft by tomorrow evening. And when I do, neither Tupac nor any other hostile will get the jump on me, precisely because I will already have texted our precise location to the Peruvian authorities.

  I swat a mosquito off the back of my neck. I listen to the constant hum and buzz of the insects foraging for food. The jungle is a loud place at night. A very alive and dangerous place. But that doesn’t mean I’m not beginning to feel the onset of exhaustion. Even standing, I feel my eyelids growing heavy.

  Until a loud shriek rips through the jungle.

  Sprinting back through the thick vegetation, the branches and twigs slapping at the exposed skin on my forearms and on my face, I see the light of the campfire through breaks in the trees and head right for it. When I come to the small clearing I come to a dead stop. It takes me a moment to comprehend what I’m seeing. It looks like a scene from out of a cheap horror movie from the 1950s. But it’s not a scene from a horror movie.

  It’s real.

  The dozens of black tarantulas that are converging upon the clearing and surrounding both Leslie and Rodney are all too real.

  28.

  Leslie and Rodney are pressed up against the fire as far as they can go without setting themselves ablaze. They are facing an army of tarantulas as it begins to encroach on every bit of open space in the clearing.

  “Stay still, guys,” I say softly from the clearing perimeter. “Rodney, take hold of one of the logs that’s not burning entirely. Toss it onto the spiders.”

  Rodney looks at me wide eyed, then turns, staring down into the fire. Slowly bending at the knees, he finds a log, grabs hold of an end that’s not burning, tosses it onto the swarm at his feet. The spiders immediately retreat, forming a wide circle around the burning log.

  “Now Rodney,” I say, “can you find another one?”

  Turning, he once again examines the fire. When he’s found a log or a stick that looks promising, he reaches down for it, tosses it out a further distance from the first log. Once more the spiders retreat, forming a large open circle around the small torch-like flame.

  “Now, I want you two to carefully step away from the fire,” I say. “Use the smaller fires to get free of the clearing. Understand?”

  “Roger that,” Rodney confirms. He takes hold of Leslie’s arm and pulls. But she won’t move. Her eyes are fixed on the hairy black tarantulas, on their never-ending movement, the way their eight legs are able to make them scatter about rapidly in all directions, as if at any moment they will run up her legs, dig their fangs into her skin and flesh.

  “Leslie,” I go on, “close your eyes. Don’t look at the spiders. Just take Rodney’s lead and go where he goes.”

  She doesn’t say anything. She’s paralyzed. Catatonic.

  “Leslie,” I say as calmly, but firmly, as possible. “You need to get out of there before you get bitten. You need to trust Rodney.”

  “Come on, Leslie,” Rodney says, his voice barely a whisper. “Let’s go.”

  He pulls her along onto the first clear ring. Drags her, is more like it. The literary agent issues a cry and goes stone stiff and still.

  “You have to keep moving, Leslie,” I insist. “Only a few more steps and you’re clear.”

  But to her those few steps must seem like miles and miles.

  Rodney shoots me a look, which I interpret as we don’t move now, we’re going to be covered in killer spiders in a matter of seconds.

  The second log set a few feet before him is losing its flame. It’s about to go out, and to prove it, the spiders are once more closing in on the area. That’s when Rodney decides to take matters into his own hands, literally. Reaching out for Leslie, he takes her into his arms, lifting her up and folding her over his shoulder in a classic fireman’s hold. He then leaps his way out of the spider trap and to the safety of the jungle.

  He comes to me, Leslie folded over his back, not making a sound.

  “I should have thought of that sooner,” he says, gently letting her down.

  “But you don’t like spiders any more than she does, do you?”

  He shakes his head. “They creep me out.”

  “Me too,” I say. “Give me snakes any day.”

  “Bite your tongue, trailblazer,” he says. “What in God’s name do you think is happening here? How could all these spiders exist much less take over th
e clearing?”

  “My guess is they were reclaiming what was theirs to begin with.”

  “How’s that?”

  Grabbing my LED lamp off my belt, I flick it on and shine the light up into the trees. That’s when we see it plain as day, only under the cover of night, when all the nocturnal forms of life in the rainforest do their eating and killing.

  A spider web.

  But this isn’t the garden variety spider web you find wrapped around the flowers in your backyard garden. This is an almost solid canopy of white silk that itself is filled with hundreds or perhaps thousands of tarantulas both large and small.

  “Oh dear God,” Rodney swallows. “We camped inside a spider’s nest.”

  “There you have the problem with making camp inside tropical rainforest at night,” I whisper. Then, “Lady and gentleman, back away slowly.”

  With Rodney once more lifting Leslie up and placing her over his shoulder, we back away from the giant spider nest and head back out to the trail.

  29.

  “Now what?” Rodney says, setting a still wide-eyed and very quiet Leslie down onto her feet.

  “We find a place to rest our heads for the few more hours until dawn,” I say. “Then, at first light, when the spiders are all snuggled back into their silk bed for the day, we’ll grab our gear and make our way to the mountain that houses the aircraft.”

  Rodney takes a look around.

  “Where exactly do you propose we lie down in a place that’s positively crawling?” Leslie asks, her voice cracking with fear.

  I look over one shoulder, then another.

  Darkness all around.

  Making a 365-degree sweep with the LED lamp, I spot an ironwood tree. It’s one of the biggest, oldest, and most rugged trees of the jungle. Thus its name. It also rarely houses army ants, which can be even more deadly in the rainforest than spiders and snakes.

  “I think I’ve just found us a bed,” I say, shining the light on the tree.

  Together we head the fifteen feet off-trail into the woods. There’s several thick branches jutting out from the massive old trunk. Leaping off my feet, I manage to grab onto the branch and, shimmying myself up, I swing my right leg up and over the branch.

  “Leslie, you’re next.”

  I lower my hand, and she grabs onto it. I pull her up, just far enough for her to swing her behind onto the branch. “Rodney?”

  “No thanks, Chief,” he says. “Got me my own branch.” He grabs hold of the branch on the other side of the tree and hefts himself up like he’s doing a pull-up. But instead of making himself comfortable on the branch, he drops back down to the jungle floor. “But I can’t even think of sleep after the attack of the killer tarantulas. Tell you what, I’ll establish a perimeter twenty or so feet out from this tree and take the first watch. You two get some sleep.”

  And with that, I watch big Rodney disappear into the thick forest.

  Leslie and I scoot ourselves back against the tree. The old branch is so thick, we have room to spare, even with our sitting beside one another. With Rodney being entirely out of sight and sound, it’s as if we have our own room inside a five-star tree-hotel, even if the bed is a bit on the hard side.

  After a minute or two has passed, Leslie takes hold of my hand, squeezes it. She turns to me. “Thanks for taking care of me back there. It’s not like I thought I was going to die. It’s more like I wanted to die before those spiders started crawling all over me, biting me.”

  “I feel your pain,” I say, running my hand through her thick hair. “We’re safe here. For now.”

  “For now,” she whispers, moving her hand from my hand to someplace else entirely. She begins undoing my belt buckle, then she unbuttons my pants. She pulls me out. I’m as hard as this ironwood tree. Harder. Unbuttoning her shorts, she gently pushes them down to her ankles. Then, climbing over me, she takes hold of me and guides me into her. Suddenly all the death of the day and the dangers of the jungle in the night disappear and I am all alone in the world with Leslie. When I come to that place and she does too, we let ourselves go without making so much as a whimper.

  Later on, she pulls her shorts back up and snuggles into me. I run my hands through her hair.

  “Leslie,” I whisper, “I’m glad you’re with me.”

  “Let’s go to sleep. You saved my life today. I wanted you to know how thankful I am by giving us both a happy ending to remember.”

  “I hope to save your life at least twice tomorrow,” I say.

  She slaps my hand and together we quietly laugh. Soon I feel her breathing become rhythmic, her chest rising and lowering with her every gentle breath. Leaning back against the tree, I look out onto the darkness and think about my words to Leslie … about saving her life tomorrow, and how prophetic they are likely to be.

  As sleep takes over, I find myself very far away from the Amazon jungle. I am suddenly standing inside a four-walled sacristy in a most holy cathedral in Turin, Italy. The cathedral is holy because of the sacred relic it houses. The Holy Shroud of Turin. The burial cloth used to wrap Jesus’s body immediately after he was removed from the cross. The linen that bears the blood-soaked wounds on the wrists and ankles where nails the size of spikes pierced them. The cloth that soaked up the blood from the crown of thorns that was pushed so far down onto Christ’s head the pincers scraped the bone of the skull. The cloth that bore witness to the blood and pain of forty lashes from a cat-o-nine-tails, and that when viewed from the perspective of a camera negative, shows up as an almost three-dimensional portrait of Christ the Man. This is the Jesus I am staring at where he is horizontally hung from the sacristy wall.

  Something happens then.

  The Shroud begins to move, tremble, as it takes shape and the image of a man appears. A live man. That man, Jesus, emerges from the Shroud, turns himself upright, and floats down to the floor so that he is standing before me, his many wounds still bleeding, water and blood dripping from the spear wound inflicted by the Roman soldier, Longinus, on his lower right side.

  All oxygen exits my lungs like the wind from a sail. I collapse to my knees, my two hands clasped together as if in prayer. He comes closer to me, holds out his hand, exposing a bleeding hole in his wrist.

  “Do you believe in me?” he asks in his native Aramaic. I don’t know the language, but somehow I understand his words precisely.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  Reaching out, he touches my mouth with his hand, his blood painting my lips. He then takes hold of my hand and clasps my index finger with the two fingers on his hand. He forces my index finger through the hole in his wrist.

  “I died for you,” he says. “And you found me two thousand years later.”

  “Yes,” I say, feeling the warmth from his flesh and blood wrapped around my finger. “I found your bones. I wrote a novel about it. It’s called The Shroud Key.”

  “Did you believe in me then? When you saw my bones?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, as tears begin to stream down my face. “Your body disappeared…again.”

  He takes hold of my wrist, yanks my finger out of his nail hole. “He who believeth in me shall have eternal life.”

  “I want to believe,” I say. “I really do want to believe in you. But who are you? Are you human? Are you born of this earth? Or somewhere else entirely? Somewhere way out there?”

  “The mysteries of life are many. The clues are few. You and your species are not alien creatures, but then you are not all man either. The power of God is far greater than man. The power of the universe is far greater than God.”

  “If I’m not all man, then who am I?”

  “We have left behind many clues for you to understand your beginning. None of them have convinced everyone of the existence of God. None of them have convinced you of the existence of other worlds. Worlds teaming with life.”

  “Are you God?”

  “I am your maker, and I come from a place far away from here.”

  That�
��s when something miraculous happens. The blood disappears from his body, as if it were being soaked up by a sponge. His wounds heal, and his body takes on a new shape and color altogether. His body shrinks, his head becomes more ovular, his hair and beard retracting back into the skull and face, his deep brown eyes turning big, black, and egg-shaped. His arms and legs lose most of their mass until they become gray skin and bone. A light emerges from behind him where the sacristy wall was. The light is brighter than the sun. This man, this God, this creature from another world … he turns and disappears into the brilliant light.

  30.

  Morning comes gently with the newly risen sun breaking through the leafy canopy in sharply angled, if not brilliant radiant rays. It’s like the filtered sunlight that pours through the stained glass in a cathedral.

  As I clear the sleep from my eyes, I can see that Leslie and I are not alone on the branch. There’s something moving around at my feet. But then, moving isn’t the right word. Slithering is more like it.

  Acting on instinct, my entire body goes stone still. So still I can hear my own heart beating in rhythm with Leslie’s heart. She’s still asleep, her head resting peacefully on my chest. The snake that is corkscrewing itself around the branch is an anaconda. Its skin is brown and accented with dark-brown, circular and egg-shaped spots. While it’s impossible for me to get an idea of its length, I can see that its girth must measure a foot to a foot and a half around.

  My mouth goes dry and my pulse begins to pound as the head of the anaconda pops up not by my feet, but over my chest and Leslie’s back. Two long, crescent moon–shaped fangs stare me in the face along with two black eyes that clearly recognize their next meal.

  I try and reach for my .45 but Leslie’s right shoulder is pressed against my chest, dead weight, making it impossible for me to reach for it without waking her and possibly knocking her off the tree.