Merritt leaned over Sam's shoulder as she studied the mound of bones. She shuffled through the pile and lifted them out one by one, repeating the same phrase like a mantra.
"This can't be right."
"What?" he asked.
She looked up at him and blinked as though seeing him for the first time. She furrowed her brow and seemed to think for a long time before she finally spoke.
"Look at this bone here." She held up the broken shaft of the distal half of a femur. "This broad portion forms the roof of the knee joint. The edges of the condyles should be more clearly defined, and the cortex should show thin striations and grooves. This is too smooth, too perfectly rounded, almost as though it's been ground down and polished." She turned it so the broken end of the shaft faced him. "And the medullary cavity is hollow. Do you see that? There should be a crust of marrow and vessels, not a tunnel that could have been bored by a drill."
"I don't understand the significance."
"In 1964, Anasazi remains were unearthed at Polacca Wash on a Hopi reservation in Arizona. All of the bones exhibited these same kinds of fractures, and were similarly smoothed and hollowed. It's one of the great mysteries of Native American culture. The prevailing theory is that the ends of the bones are so smooth because they were boiled. Bouncing around in the water and bumping against the sides of the pot made them that way, and the shafts are hollow because the marrow was boiled and scraped out. And this puddle right here?" She gestured to the small black pool filled with putrid water. "This used to be a fire pit. You can tell by the carbon scoring on the floor and wall. There are even pots right over there. These people cooked their dead on this very spot."
"Why would they do that when they could have just buried them like all of the others?"
"Don't you get it? They cooked these bones with the meat still on them. They were eating their dead." She drew a deep breath and resumed in a less animated tone. "The Chachapoya weren't cannibalistic. They were primarily an agricultural society. You saw it in practice on the slopes of the fortress by the lake. They built elaborate steppes on the mountainside and filled them with soil to grow everything from agaves to maize, and were very successful doing it. And they revered their dead. You remember that cavern we found? All of the bodies were bundled with great care and placed in chullpas nearly as nice as the homes they lived in. They wouldn't have eaten their dead. Not unless circumstances had become desperate and they were cut off from all other sources of food."
"So what do you think happened here?"
"I don't have enough information to form a hypothesis yet, but at a guess, I'd say they were involved in some sort of lengthy standoff inside this fortress."
"You think it was the Spanish?"
"No. The conquistadors had vastly superior firepower. None of the tribes were able to hold them off for long. Even the Inca, who were known as the most ferocious warriors, were able to muster precious little resistance against the Spanish with their armor and muskets."
"What about the Inca themselves?"
"The design of the building reflects Incan design. They had already assimilated the culture."
"Then if you're right, who could they have possibly been holed up in here against?"
The question hung in the air between them for an interminable moment before Sam abruptly rose and headed for the doorway.
"I don't know, but the answer has to be around here somewhere."
Merritt climbed over the rubble and followed her out into the rain. After so long in the darkness, even the gray day was blinding. Thunder crashed overhead and rumbled down the rocky slope like an avalanche. The rain intensified in response.
His mind flashed back to the theory Galen had put forth earlier. He shook away the images that the birdman's words conjured.
Jay hustled to keep up with them, the camera jouncing in his grip. Mere minutes ago, he had been grinning from ear to ear like a kid on Christmas morning, but now a note of worry had diminished his smile and crept into the corners of his eyes. Dahlia and Galen brought up the rear, while the three remaining armed men abandoned the crate and struck off in the opposite direction toward where Merritt heard Colton calling for Leo.
"That was their palatial structure," Sam said. "Using it to defile the deceased would have been the ultimate sacrilege." She looked from side to side. "But it was also the only building with a stone roof."
"It makes sense. They wouldn't have wanted to ignite those flimsy thatch roofs directly above their heads."
"You don't get it. They could easily have made a bonfire out in the open."
"Unless they'd barricaded themselves inside that chamber."
"Exactly."
"So you're saying the stones piled in front of the entrances weren't the result of the building crumbling over time."
"I'm not saying anything. All I know is that something awful happened here, something so terrible that these people were forced to eat each other to survive."
Merritt could tell they were heading east by the sound of the waterfall to his left, toward the clearing where they had emerged on the trail from the jungle. The stone-tiled path was wider here, and accommodated trees with trunks that had to be as wide as he was tall. Huts lay in ruin to either side, overgrown by vegetation. Saplings erupted from every crack in the stone.
Sam shoved through shrubs covered with ants until she finally stopped dead in her tracks.
"What is it?" Merritt asked. He stepped to her right and followed her gaze to the ground.
A skeleton was sprawled facedown at her feet. One arm was stretched out above it, the other nowhere to be seen. Roots from the bushes had grown through the ribcage. The skull was so dirty and ravaged by age it had turned the color of brass, and the occipital bone was shattered to such an extent that he could see through to the the eye sockets on the underside. Only half of one of the legs remained attached to the cracked ilium. The rest of the parts were absent.
"He was left to rot where he fell," Sam whispered.
"How do you know it's a 'he'?" Jay asked. He rounded the remains to get a better view through the camera.
"The inlet of the pelvis is too narrow for childbirth, and the angle between the pubic bones is less than ninety degrees."
With one final glance down, Sam continued walking. Ten yards farther, she shoved aside the branches of a fern to reveal the skeletal profile of a badly fractured face. It looked like someone had taken a hammer to the temporal bone and collapsed the lateral aspect of the orbit. Both arms were stretched out above its shoulders as though it had been trying to drag itself forward, a task it had been unable to accomplish without the ends of its arms and its hands.
Sam barely paused before continuing onward. They passed what was left of several more bodies before they reached a small clearing at the edge of the fortification. The village had been built on a short, angled plateau in such a way that the outer wall was only four feet tall here, while the ground on the other side was nearly thirty feet below. Lianas and vines crawled all around their feet, scaled the bricks, and descended the face of the fortification. In their midst were a good half-dozen skeletons. These were in far worse shape than the others they had encountered on their way. They were so severely broken and disarticulated that it was impossible to tell which bones belonged to which individual. A snapped spear poked out of the underbrush, and a quiver brimming with arrows rested under a nest of ferns.
Merritt nudged one of the skulls with his toe. It rolled to the side, leaving twin rows of teeth packed into the dirt. Something glinted from the mud. He knelt to inspect it, and after a moment pried a large metal object from the ground. It was a headdress like the one he had found in Hunter's backpack. He smeared the mud away to expose the sculpted gold.
"May I?" Sam asked, relieving him of the mask before he could reply.
He walked over to the edge of the wall and stared down. The fortification was undamaged. Time had taken its toll on the smooth bricks, but none of them had been broken. Only the column th
at held the torch directly beneath him on the ground had toppled.
It made no sense.
"This is where the invading force breached their fortifications," he said, thinking aloud. Jay raised the camera toward him, but he pushed the lens away. "They took their stand right here, where these men fell, and there was no one left to claim their bodies. But they were so savagely attacked...I mean, their skulls were shattered and they were torn limb from limb."
He turned to face Galen, whose face had gone ashen.
"And the other bodies we found on the path leading here," Sam said, "they were all pointing in the opposite direction as though they'd been overcome as they ran."
"Like the jaguar," Galen whispered.
"They were falling back to that chamber where you discovered the boiled bones," Merritt said.
Silence hung over the clearing, marred only by the rumble of the waterfall and the whistle of the wind along the wall.
"What in the name of God happened here?" Sam whispered. The spark of excitement faded from her eyes.
"I think..." Galen started, but said no more. He closed his mouth, shook his head, and glanced at Merritt from the corner of his eye.
"What?" Sam asked.
Galen looked again at Merritt, then sighed. "Nothing."
He turned away from them and struck off on the trail. After several steps, he paused, plucked a long brown feather from a snarl of ferns, and hurried back in the direction from which they had come.
VII
3:11 p.m.
"John Kaleleiki," Leo said.
"How can you be sure?" Colton asked. He relieved Leo of the penlight and crouched to scrutinize what was left of the man.
"The Hawaiian-print shirts were his trademark. In the five years I knew him, I never saw him wear anything else." Leo's voice fell to a whisper. "He was one of the country's most respected geological engineers and a master of the martial art form Lua. And they tore him apart like tissue paper. There isn't even any blood on his machete."
Colton had noticed the same thing. Based on the patterns of spatter on the ceiling and walls, whatever killed him had attacked simultaneously from the front and the rear. The man had never stood a chance.
He raised the light from the bones and directed it deeper into the darkness.
"We need to tell the others," Leo whispered. "And we should seriously consider a plan for evacuation."
"Not until we have something concrete." Colton eased past Leo, careful not to step on Kaleleiki's carcass. The tacky blood made a crackling sound as it peeled away from the ground on the tread of his boots.
"Concrete? Tell me John wasn't killed in the exact same manner as Rippeth." He swatted the flies from his face and followed Colton. "How much more concrete can it get? There's something here in the jungle with us, something capable of slaughtering every single one of us."
"But they haven't attacked yet, have they? Let's evaluate what we know so far. This man was obviously alone when he was attacked. Rippeth had been alone as well. The rest of us haven't seen anything, have we? Safety appears to be in numbers. As long as we stay together, I don't believe they currently pose much of a threat."
"And what about Dr. Russell's theory regarding what might be out there?"
"He was no proof."
"I think what's left of John Kaleleiki would probably qualify."
Colton rounded on Leo and spoke slowly through bared teeth, making no attempt to hide his rising anger.
"You placed me in charge of this expedition because I am the very best at what I do. Do you really think panicking the others is the right decision? Next thing you know, they'll all be fleeing through the jungle, screaming the whole way. And if my assessment is correct, that's a guaranteed death sentence. What we need to do first is to gain a functional understanding of our adversary---how it thinks, how it functions, what triggers it to attack---and from there we need to plot a course of action. Only then, when everything is in place, can we make the others aware of the threat, once we're confident that we'll be able to guarantee their safety."
"And in the meantime?"
"The less anyone suspects, the better. For now, we need to determine exactly what happened here, and how to prevent it from happening again. And unless I'm mistaken, somewhere down the shaft ahead of us is the deposit of gold we came here to find."
"I don't give a rat's ass about the gold anymore," Leo whispered.
"Then it's a good thing you're paying me to be in charge," Colton said. "Because I do."
At the sound of approaching footsteps, Colton turned and shined the beam past what was left of John Kaleleiki. Sorenson raised a hand to keep the light out of his eyes. Behind the massive blonde man, Morton and Webber stepped into the weak glow. Black flies swarmed around them, but they appeared oblivious as their attention fell to the ground at their feet. The color drained from the normally red-faced Scandinavian's cheeks. He raised his piercing blue eyes to meet Colton's stare.
"Keep the others out of this tunnel," Colton said. "And see what you can do about this mess."
Sorenson looked down at the carnage, then back up at Colton. His features again became unreadable.
"I trust you have no objection to renegotiating our salaries," Sorenson said.
Colton turned to Leo and raised an eyebrow.
"Whatever," Leo said. "Anything you want."
"And as far as the contents of the crate...?" Sorenson asked.
"Equip yourselves however you see fit," Colton said, "but I don't want the others to sense that anything is amiss until we can rationalize what we're dealing with here. Understand?"
Sorenson gave a curt nod, then turned to the other men. After a brief whispered conversation, Morton and Webber headed back toward the mouth of the shaft and vanished into the darkness, leaving Sorenson to handle the untidy details.
Colton whirled and struck off deeper into the mountain. A faint aura of light bloomed behind him and he heard a chiseling sound as Sorenson set to work. The noise faded as he and Leo advanced. They now had to be close to three hundred yards into the rock crevice, and still bones filled the recesses in the ossuary walls. How many bodies had been interred here?
The ground became more coarse and uneven, and began to slope downward, imperceptibly at first, but then steeper and steeper until they descended a series of rock ledges into a large cavern. The flashlight was just strong enough to illuminate the tips of the stalactites above them. The remainder of their conical forms was shrouded in a palpable darkness that rustled restlessly. An occasional leather-winged inhabitant slashed through the shadows before disappearing once more. The walls weren't smooth, and instead showcased deep gouges and rough chisel marks, from which quartz glimmered in reflection like tiny eyes. Crumbled granite lined the base of the walls.
The air was murky with dust, through which the occasional fly circled, only to be snared by one of the dark bodies that dove from the cavern roof and vanished again as though it had never been. Based on the smell, the bats were definitely earning their keep. There was only a dull buzzing from the center of the chamber, where the thin beam highlighted first a boot, then the stump of the leg to which it had once been attached. The nubs and knots of severed tendons curled away from the bloodstained bones. All of the muscle and flesh had been stripped away, leaving a bare pelvis wearing the remnants of a black leather belt. Flies crawled on the slightly concave bones, dipping their feet in the sticky crust of bodily dissolution. There were tatters of fabric everywhere, all saturated to a deep black with blood. The ribcage was shattered, the spine acutely broken. Neither of the arms were anywhere near the shoulder joints, and what was left of the skull was a good five feet away near the far wall, where it rested against an open case of fancy picks and geologist's utensils. The entire top half of the cranium had been broken away, revealing an empty bowl where the brain and pituitary gland should have been. Dried brown skin still clung to the face beneath the eyes and across the cheekbones, but the lips and tongue were gone, leaving a frame
of broken teeth frozen several inches apart in a final eternal scream.
A pistol rested on the floor near the head. Colton crossed to it and lifted it from the floor. He sniffed the barrel. Cordite. He ejected the clip of the Beretta Px4 Storm semi-automatic, and fed the remaining rounds into his palm. Seven. He ejected another from the chamber.
The man had managed to fire only two shots.
"Any idea who this might have been?" he asked.
Leo shook his head in reply.
They surveyed the jumble of belongings that surrounded the cavern. There were backpacks and boxes. A small table had been thrown together using a length of flat stone, upon which were the shattered fragments of beakers and test tubes, small bottles of chemicals that looked like eye drops, and a toppled can of Sterno. The blue sludge had oozed out into a phlegm-like puddle. Several wrappers from dehydrated rations littered the floor. A miner's helmet rested beside them, the plastic cracked like the Liberty Bell, the lens of the light a mess of frayed wires. A brownish crust lined the inside of the dome.
After a minute's search, Colton found another helmet. He switched on the light and set it on his head.
The powerful beam illuminated the better part of the chamber and startled the bats to nervous flight overhead, where they raced and collided for a long moment before resuming their inverted perches. The cavern was roughly the size of a large garage, but more ovular in shape. A sharp mat of guano covered the floor and the few stalagmites that pointed back up at the ceiling.
Both men averted their eyes from the remains.
What at first appeared to be a wall of shadows resolved into a narrow corridor as Colton neared, but it wasn't a natural formation like the crevice through which they'd entered. It was maybe twice the width of his shoulders, and he had to duck to enter. He walked at a crouch. The surfaces of the walls were uneven from being chiseled by primitive instruments. There were no wooden supports to brace the earthen ceiling as one would find in a modern mine, making it feel as though the entire weight of the mountain pressed down upon his head. The shaft stretched another thirty yards before it appeared to terminate against a solid block of granite.
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