She’d have to make very good shots.
Lia edged a little closer. The two men began talking to each other, trying to decide what to do. The one who hac barked at her before said that she should put up her hands.
Just as she was about to drop her briefcase and shoot, a burst of gunfire echoed nearby. The two men with the AK 47s jerked around in the direction of the trail. Lia went to one knee and fired twice, dropping the first man with a shoes to the temple and catching the second square in the back of the head.
She dove at the rifles as they fell, sliding into them. She fished around for the gun, spinning back, her head dizzy.
The men by the helicopter seemed like deer caught ir headlights, staring at her with shocked expressions.
Lia went quickly to the other rifle, grabbing it and ther retreating back toward the wreck. She made the mistake of glancing to her right; the sharp drop-off increased her wooziness and she threw herself down against the battered metal of the fallen chopper.
“What’s going on?” Lia whispered to the Art Room.
“We’re not sure,” said Telach. “Put out a video bug.”
Lia slipped her hand in the bag.
“I only have two, and one audio fly,” she said. She stuck one video bug on the helicopter tail and the other near the front of the fuselage, giving as full a view of the area as possible. She left the fly with the bug, then ducked down the side of the hill, crouching with the guns.
Two soldiers appeared, rifles ready. One covered the mer near the helicopter while the other bent to the two men Lia had killed.
“Two people in uniforms. They look like Peruvian army.” Rockman said. “May be a legitimate military unit.”
“May be isn’t good enough.”
The soldiers were joined by an officer, who walked to the small group of men and demanded to know who had shot the two dead men. He used curses when he referred to them calling the dead men traitors and saying the shooter would be rewarded.
The men said nothing. The officer identified himself as a lieutenant with the army, but this failed to impress them as well.
“All right, we’re checking him,” said Rockman.
“I killed the guerrillas,” Lia yelled in English. “Who are you?”
The officer craned his head to see who was talking to him. “Hello?” he said in English.
“Yeah, hello.”
“I am Lieutenant Gomez. I’m here to save you from the guerrillas.”
“Yeah, well you’re a little late.” Lia climbed up and walked toward the wreckage. She kept the rifles pointed toward the ground and walked straight to the briefcase she had dropped.
“Lia!” hissed Rockman. “We haven’t verified that he’s legitimate.”
“He would have shot me by now if he wasn’t,” Lia muttered, grabbing the briefcase.
70
The ruins reminded Dean of the miniature villages the candy maker in his old hometown set out in windows at Christmas-time to lure shoppers into the store. The ancient Inca estate was set at the side of a mountain on a narrow plateau that overlooked the valley. It glowed green in the light, its carefully fitted stones covered with moss and grass. Two large buildings perched over the cliffs; they lacked roofs but otherwise were perfectly intact, seemingly untouched by the five or six hundred years that had passed since the complex was last used. Below them were narrow terraces, once used for growing crops, which looked like steps from above.
To the north and east, the ruins of other buildings sprawled along a series of steps in the rock outcroppings. Farther north were long rectangles of stone, now just rubble; these were the remains of very large buildings that would have been used as temples or palaces.
“You’re looking at the private estate of an Inca king,” said Karr, leaning forward between the seats of the airplane. “There’s a group of rocks, a trio there. See it? They would have made sacrifices to the gods there.”
“Human?” asked Fashona.
“I think humans they just tossed down in ravines.”
“Seriously?” asked Fashona.
“Oh yeah. You ever been to Machu Picchu?” said Karr.
“No.”
“Way bigger than this. Blow you away.”
“You were there?” asked Fashona.
“Nah. Travelogue.”
Karr’s description came from one of the videos they’d been given as part of the mission briefing. Dean stared at the complex through the windscreen of the airplane, looking not at the ruins but at the hills around them. Unlike the much larger and more famous ruins Karr had mentioned, these were not open to the public; they were part of a military reservation and off-limits to the general public. A radar site a mile and a half to the north was used as a listening post to spy on the Ecuadorians across the border.
“The Incas ruled from Ecuador all the way south through Chile.” continued Karr. “Their capital was in Cusco, pretty far south of here, but they governed this area. Had some interesting beliefs.”
“Like?” asked Fashona.
“They threw little kids into the gorges so that there would be no disease.”
“For real?”
“Oh yeah. That was an honor.”
“Some honor.”
“Yeah. But their justice was pretty hard. If you slept with the wrong woman, she was buried alive and you were hanged. If you were already married, your family was slaughtered as well.”
“This is as close as I can get without being picked up on their radar,” said Fashona, banking the Cessna to the southeast. “We’re below their horizon, but we can’t push it too far. You guys are going to have a pretty good hike ahead of you.”
“So what else is new?” said Karr. “You have a good sleep, Charlie?”
“Too short.”
“Tell me about it.”
They landed near a small village a few miles downriver of the ruins. While not large, the village was used as a transportation nexus by the military installation as well as some commercial mining concerns to the south, and there was a small marina of speedboats. There was even another floatplane at the docks where they tied up. Fashona was returning east to refuel and get more supplies; he told Dean and Karr that he would be back in twenty-four hours, or sooner if they needed him.
“What do you figure a good price on a boat is here?” Karr asked as they walked toward a small shack advertising rentals.
“Don’t haggle,” Dean said. “Let’s just get going.”
“You have to haggle, Charlie. Otherwise they don’t respect ya.”
Karr began negotiating with the help of an Art Room translator. Dean turned around and scanned the dock area, feigning interest in the boats but really looking over the few locals who were sitting nearby.
A tall, lanky man with blotchy brown skin approached him and asked in Spanish if he was looking to rent an airplane. When Dean shook his head, the man asked again, this time in English.
“We just got here,” Dean told him.
“What are you doing?”
“We’re going downriver to fish,” Dean said. The man looked at him suspiciously until Dean added, “And look for a little gold.”
“Many people look for gold.” The floatplane pilot nodded. Treasure hunting was a time-honored pursuit. “I know some good spots.”
“I’ll bet.”
“You want me to show you?”
“We’re really all right, thanks.”
“Maybe you’ll need another airplane.”
Dean thought reserving the man’s plane might not be a bad idea — there was always the possibility that Fashona would get tied up somewhere. But doing that might lead to more questions, and so he just shook his head.
“Two hundred dollars a day, plus fuel. A very good deal,” said the man.
“That’s a terrible deal,” said Karr, looming behind him.
“No, a very good deal.”
“Well, we don’t need a plane. Maybe tomorrow. Come on, Charlie.”
“One-fifty,�
�� said the pilot.
“Sorry,” said Dean. “Maybe in the future.”
“We could probably work him down to a hundred,” said Karr, leading Dean to the speedboat. “Cheaper than Fashona, I’ll bet.”
71
Lieutenant Gomez told Lia that he had been pursuing the guerrillas through the rugged territory for weeks. The people who had gathered initially were from the local village and probably had a great deal of information about the guerrillas, he added.
“But these people never tell,” he complained bitterly. “As if it is a matter of honor for them. They are Indians, ignorant natives. What can you do?”
The lieutenant was convinced that the guerrillas had shot down Lia’s helicopter with a rocket grenade. The Art Room experts tentatively agreed when Lia surreptitiously fed them some pictures using the camera attachment on the PDA.
The UN had not announced the flight beforehand, and it seemed unlikely that the helicopter had been specifically targeted by the rebels — though given everything else that they had said and done over the past few weeks, it couldn’t entirely be ruled out. The lieutenant said that he thought the guerrillas believed the helicopter was ferrying chemical company workers, who had occasionally been threatened in the past.
Impressed by her connection with the UN election commission, the lieutenant told her that there was a small settlement about a mile down the slope. If she went with one of his men, she would find food there and a telephone, as well as a small contingent of his men. They would consult his company commander and see what could be done about arranging transportation and alerting the UN. Lia thanked him and started to go.
“Stop. The rifles. You must leave them.”
“Why?”
“They were the guerrillas’. We have a system,” said the lieutenant.
“He gets a kickback for each gun he turns in,” Rockman explained.
“I want to hold on to this weapon,” said Lia. She held it up; two of the soldiers near the lieutenant interpreted this as a threatening gesture and snapped up their own guns. Frowning, she handed the AK-47 over.
* * *
The soldier detailed to escort her was a good-looking twenty-year-old who had a gold filling in a front tooth. Speaking in Spanish, he told her a story about how he used to kill chickens on his grandmother’s farm by wringing their necks. Lia couldn’t decide whether he was trying to repulse her or impress her; both seemed equally plausible from his expression.
The trail from the cliff led to a hard-packed road barely wide enough for a motorcycle, let alone a truck. After about a quarter of a mile they crossed a much wider asphalt road cut into the mountainside. On the other side of the road they found another trail, this one strewn with rocks. It zigzagged through a series of cuts before leveling off in a brush-filled plain. Then it meandered through the vegetation for twenty yards or so before funneling down another series of cuts. Stairs had been carved into the stones in a few places, their treads worn at the center by the shuffling feet of centuries of travelers. Lia felt as if she might come across a Spanish conquistador at every turn.
“What do the people in the village here do?” she asked the soldier, as much to stop his narrative of dying chickens as to satisfy her curiosity.
“Nothing.” he told her. “They are just country people. Backward. Old Indians lost in a daze.”
Lia would have laughed at the idea of a chicken killer calling other people backward, but at that moment a hail of bullets rained down from above. She dove to the ground, sliding on the briefcase for a few feet as if it were a sled. A shower of lead, dirt, and rock splinters pelted the narrow pass behind her. She managed to half-crawl, half-slide out of the gunfire. But when she raised her head to get her bearings, a fresh fusillade of bullets pelted the dirt above her.
“Lia!” said Rockman in her ear. “What’s going on?”
“Gunfire. Automatic weapons.” She glanced to her right, looking for her escort — or better, his gun. But he was nowhere to be seen.
As the gunfire relented, Lia looked around the stone cut where she had taken shelter. The angle of the path made it difficult to see above — a good thing actually, as it kept her out of the line of fire. The ledge opposite her was bare.
“How far am I from the village?” she asked Rockman.
“Another half mile by air. I’m looking at a satellite photo of the area from a few days ago. The trail zigs down to the north, then flattens out. We have a U-2 en route to your area; he’s no more than five minutes away.”
Lia took out her pistol and began backing down the trail in the direction of the village, dragging her briefcase behind her. She got about twenty feet when a fresh spray of gunfire percolated the mountainside, the rocks magnifying the guns’ pop and making it difficult to determine exactly where they were. Lia froze and turned slowly, making sure the way she was going was still clear.
It wasn’t. Shadows appeared near the bend, and she heard footsteps clattering nearby. She was surrounded.
“If you are a soldier,” shouted a voice in Spanish, “surrender and join us or you will be killed.”
“I’m not a soldier,” she yelled in Spanish.
She leaned forward, peering back toward the cut she had just come down. She could see the noses of two AK-47s, their owners hidden behind the rocks.
“Surrender, miss,” said a voice somewhere above her. “You are a prisoner of Sendero Nuevo, the New Path for Peru. We will treat you with kindness if you come peacefully, and show no mercy if you resist.”
72
Dean and Karr took the small runabout downriver about a mile before turning back. There was little traffic nearby. Karr’s PDA had survived the dunking, and they used it to help guide them to a spot a half mile below the Inca ruins that the Art Room had identified as a good place to hide the boat.
Fashona had left them with some new gear, including new radiation detection gear, an MP5 submachine gun, and night-vision goggles. He’d also brought replacement boots for Dean. They were a bit on the stiff side, but Dean changed into them when he got out of the boat, figuring they would be better than sneakers when climbing the rough terrain.
“You’re not to engage any forces,” Telach told them after they tied the boat up. “Especially Peruvian. Avoid contact.”
“What if they’re hostile?” said Karr.
“Avoid contact,” she snapped. “Avoid contact. You got it?”
“You’re no fun.”
“Charlie?”
“Yeah, we understand, Marie. If we find this guy, though—”
“Simply report what you find. We’ll handle the next step.”
“Gonna send the Delta boys to finish the job,” said Karr.
The hike to the buildings would be about ten miles long. Along the way, they would climb about five thousand feet, a little more than a mile. An unmanned aircraft known as a Global Hawk had been launched on a mission from the U.S. to supply overhead reconnaissance, which would make things easier than they might have been. There were a number of road patrols and checkpoints, and the eye in the sky would tell them which were occupied and which weren’t. They’d also be able to use the trails without having to worry about being surprised by a patrol, even though they were walking in broad daylight.
Fifteen minutes into the hike, Karr suggested they snack while they walked. Before Dean could offer an opinion, the other op was halfway through his third sandwich.
“That food’s supposed to last us until tomorrow,” said Dean.
“Can’t work on an empty stomach. Something will turn up. Worst case, we chow down on some of those MREs Fashona gave us. Good enough for the troops, good enough for us. Right?”
“I guess.”
“You prefer C rations?”
“MREs will do.” MREs—“Meals Ready to Eat”—were the modem equivalent of C rations, the World War II era canned food issued to troops in the field.
A few minutes later, Sandy Chafetz checked in with them from the Art Room, telling them sh
e was taking over from Rockman as their runner.
“I’m sitting in for a bit,” she told Dean. “I’m looking at you right now on the infrared feed from the Global Hawk. Going back to optical. You have a nice, easy walk around the perimeter of those Aztec ruins to the outpost. There are two soldiers down the road, but we think you can get around them easily.”
“Incas,” said Dean, correcting her. “The Aztecs were further north. How’s Lia doing?”
“Lia’s all right,” said Chafetz.
There was a defensiveness to her voice, the tone a kid might use if he was being questioned about breaking curfew.
“What happened to her?” said Dean.
“Charlie—”
“What happened to her?”
“She’s OK.”
“Let me talk to Telach.”
“It’s under control, Charlie.”
“If it were, Rockman would be talking to me.”
Telach broke in. “What’s wrong, Charlie?”
“Where’s Lia?”
“Her helicopter crashed about eighty miles north of La Oroya. She was rescued by some soldiers there, but now they’ve been ambushed by local guerrillas.”
“Where is she now?”
“We have it under control.”
“I want the whole story,” insisted Dean, stopping.
“That is the whole story, Charlie. We have a team standing by to assist.”
“Standing by where? Is this the team in Ecuador?”
“Charlie, I really don’t have time to explain this to you. Please let us handle it.”
He slapped the communications unit off in a fit of anger.
“Charlie?” said Karr.
Dean pointed at his ear. Karr turned off his communications set.
“Lia’s in trouble,” Dean told him.
“Where is she?”
“North of La Oroya. She has no backup.”
“We have the paras in Ecuador,” said Karr. “And there’s all sorts of Delta people arriving in Lima.”
“Ecuador’s a couple of hundred miles away, more. They’re situated for a mission near Iquitos. She’s down near La Oroya. One of us should be there backing her up.”
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