Merritt couldn't bear to look at it any longer. He had to get out of that horrible tent, get some fresh air. Throwing aside tattered straps of nylon stiff with absorbed blood, he hurried out from under the overhang, craned his face to the sky, and allowed the rain to wash over him. The storm had intensified even in the short while he was inside the tent, but there wasn't enough water in the sky to wash the touch of death from his skin.
"This couldn't have happened much more than a few weeks ago," he said. His gorge rose, but through force of will alone he forced it back down. "What I don't get though, is why there aren't scavengers feasting on what's left. Where are the vultures and coyotes? The smell should have drawn them from miles away. There's nothing but those filthy flies."
None of the others spoke. Shock had descended upon their pale features. They had all known that four men had been lost in this valley from the previous expedition. Their hope had been to find them alive and unharmed, and simply unable to contact the outside world. No one had expected to find them like...this. Four of them. Was it possible there were more bodies, similarly slaughtered? And if so, it begged the most terrifying question of all.
Was whatever killed them in such a fashion still out there, watching them at this very moment?
His skin crawled under the scrutiny of unseen eyes. Was it a result of the paranoia spawned by his military training, or were they indeed already surrounded?
"We need to gather the others and get out of here while we still can," Merritt said, looking to each of them in turn.
Jay approached the tent and raised the camera, but Dahlia stayed his arm. There were some things never meant to be immortalized on film. Instead, he wandered toward the gap in the fortification wall, where a stone staircase descended to the forest floor. Leading with the lens, Jay reached the top of the steps and halted abruptly.
"Holy crap," he whispered, and turned away. He heaved several times over a sapling tree fern.
Merritt jogged over to where Jay wiped a strand of saliva from his chin and looked down the stairs, which were lined to either side by walls that were nearly five feet tall. Iron cages, like those that housed the torches on the pedestals encircling the fortress, topped the slanted walls of the thin trench every few feet. At the bottom, a large rectangular stone that appeared to have been carved to fit into the opening of the staircase lay cracked and covered with moss. And on the uneven steps between, Merritt saw what had caused Jay's reaction.
Another body was sprawled on the staggered rocks. Or at least what was left of it. The manner in which the man had been slain reminded Merritt of the jaguar carcass: scattered in a straight line as though torn apart while in motion. The broken legs, bereft of flesh, save the black skin on the ankles above the boots, were closer to the top, while the pelvis and torso rested a dozen steps down, ribs shattered, spine unnaturally bent and twisted. The skeletal arms pointed toward where the crushed skull rested in a puddle of muddy rainwater and hair at the bottom. Shreds of clothing had blown into the corners of the stairs with the detritus.
Only the black flies dared to disturb the unclean bones, though the rain deterred all but the most ambitious individuals.
The man had been overcome while trying to flee. He must have seen his assailant coming too late and made a break for it, but he hadn't been fast enough.
These men had never stood a chance. Merritt looked into the pallid faces of his companions. Would they?
"What the hell is capable of doing something like this?" Sam whispered.
"It's irrelevant," Merritt said. He drew a deep breath, forced aside his fear, and tapped into his training and instincts. "Right now, we need to focus on rounding up the others and getting as far from here as we can. Nothing else matters at this point."
The words of the scarred chieftain returned unbidden.
Let them pass. They are dead already.
He should have identified the danger sooner. All of the signs had been there.
Their guides out of Pomacochas had sensed the threat and abandoned them days ago. Even that hardass Rippeth had acknowledged it and slipped off during the night. Maybe if they moved fast enough they would be able to escape the fate to which the black-painted man had consigned them.
"We can't afford to waste any more time," Merritt said. He looked up into the belly of the storm and the mist that hovered in the canopy, mere feet over their heads. Somewhere above, the sun was preparing to sneak behind the sharp peak and turn day to night. He could feel it in the marrow of his bones. They didn't want to still be here when that happened. "Stay close. Move fast. Don't slow for anything."
With those final words, he turned and ran back toward the cave where they had last seen the others, listening to make sure he heard the slap of footsteps on the wet ground behind him.
V
4:28 p.m.
The stone floor was covered with mounds of fecal material. Galen immediately identified it as raptor feces by look, but certainly not by size. The older droppings had dried and crumbled, presumably the source of the cloud of dust that lingered in the cavern. There were fresh piles on top of the old, the mixture of urine and white urates still runny, the consistency of a partially fried egg, the fecal matter well-formed pellets nearly the size of a dog's.
He knelt before a heap that was perhaps a few days old. It was just dry enough that it no longer glistened with moisture. He lifted it from the rest, set it on a clear section of the ground beside him, and set to work.
"What in the world are you doing?" Leo asked.
"Exactly what it looks like," Galen said, breaking apart the feces with his fingers. "Didn't you ever dissect an owl pellet when you were in school? The point was to determine the diet of the owl. I can remember plucking out mouse bones and trying to reassemble the skeleton. Very fascinating really."
"So you're trying to figure out what it's been eating."
"And so much more." Galen's hands trembled as he sifted through the black matter. He focused solely on the project, and not on the implications of what he already knew to be true. "I could tell right away by the fecund scent that we were dealing with a carnivorous species. The smell of fresh meat processed through an avian digestive system has a distinct aroma, which is way different than the smell of digested carrion. It's like comparing the scent of an eagle's feces to that of a condor. At first glance, the feces appears to have been formed by a species of raptor. However, if you look closely, you can see several crucial distinctions. First of all, size-wise, the pellets are far larger than that of any known bird of prey. Second, the ratio of the chalky white urates to feces is totally out of proportion. Raptor species have a lower ratio than say, pigeons, but even pigeons don't evacuate such a large volume of urates in relation to the total mass."
"What are you getting at?" Colton asked. The beam on his helmet stayed in constant motion along with his eyes in lighthouse fashion. While the man remained outwardly stoic, his nerves manifested in the way he shifted from one foot to the other.
"I'm just stating what I see. We're dealing with a species that doesn't fit the mold of any modern avian. In fact, if I didn't know better, judging exclusively on the basis of the amount of urine and urates as a percentage of volume, I would suspect our subject was reptilian."
"You've already browbeaten us with your speculation, Dr. Russell. Now unless you have anything useful to add---"
Galen gasped. He could barely control his shaking hand well enough to extract his finding from the pellet. Pinching it between his fingertips, he threaded it out of the feces and held it up for the others to see.
It was a clump of thin, dark hair.
Human hair.
Colton took it from him and inspected it while Galen crumbled the remainder of the pellet and spread it out. Something hard and sharp prodded his fingertip. He picked it up and cleared off the foul coating. The base of the small object was blunt and smooth. Four thin prongs extended from the opposite side.
He reflexively dropped it and it tumbled across th
e granite floor.
The spotlight on his helmet fixed upon it.
"Oh my God," he whimpered.
The silver of the filling reflected the light.
It was a human tooth.
Galen scrambled to his feet and swiped his palms on his pants. If this didn't prove his theory, then nothing would. And right now he didn't even care what they thought. People had been killed here. The evidence was everywhere around them, from the remains in the ossuary and the cavern to those in the feces. The victims had been butchered and consumed, and he knew with complete certainty that there was no modern species of raptor capable of doing that.
He glanced at the fresh piles of feces. They couldn't be more than twenty-four hours old.
They needed to get out of there.
Now.
"Where are you going?" Colton snapped. "Get back here!"
Galen didn't even pause as he ran back toward the tiny tunnel that would eventually lead him back to the outside world. He dove to his belly and wriggled through as fast as he could. His head grazed the rock above, which tilted the helmet so that the beam pointed to the side and barely illuminated his way.
It had been a mistake to come here. The biggest mistake of his life.
His panicked breathing echoed in his ears and tears streamed down his cheeks. The fabric on his knees and elbows ripped. He felt the sting of cuts and abrasions, but he didn't care. If they didn't get far away from this mountain, then that small amount of bleeding would only be the beginning.
VI
4:43 p.m.
The gods were smiling on Tasker. He couldn't have asked for better luck.
A smile slashed his face as he stood at the edge of the stream, which, thanks to the ferocity of the storm, had swelled to the ranks of a full-blown river. So much water funneled down from the high country that it no longer gracefully cascaded over the edge, but fired from the top of the waterfall instead. The roar was nearly deafening. He and McMasters had barely been able to cross the strategically placed stones, which had already been claimed by the rising river. One misstep and they would have been swallowed whole and thrown into the air over the valley hundreds of feet below. Branches and debris hurtled downstream. Some lodged against the rock ledge, where they would only serve to raise the level even more, while others were launched on the flume of white spray into the nothingness over the canyon. A twenty-foot trunk sped down the rapids without encountering the slightest resistance and shot over the falls. Ten seconds later, the crack of wood shattering on the breakers reverberated through the mountains.
Until the storm abated and the level of the gorged stream dropped significantly, there would be no way of crossing it.
His smile broadened as he studied the trail in the sloppy mud that led into the steep jungle. Their prey were now effectively isolated on the peak above with no means of escape.
Everything had fallen into place more perfectly than he ever could have hoped. All that remained now was to follow the path laid out before them to their ultimate destination, loot the ruins of everything of value, and make sure that no witnesses survived. After that, it would be easy enough to float their haul down the river to where multiple millions of dollars awaited them.
Or rather, awaited him.
He glanced at McMasters, who remained blissfully ignorant. Once they neared Pomacochas with their treasure, he would have ample opportunity to end their partnership and countless places to hide the evidence.
The only loose end would be Monahan, and that little prick would be simple enough to make disappear with a single, well-placed phone call. A call he looked forward to making.
In his mind's eye, he saw an Italian villa on a hillside overlooking the tranquil blue of the Caribbean Sea.
It was only a matter of time now.
But in the interim, there was still plenty of fun to be had. They were closing in for the kill. Soon the valley would echo with the screams of the dying before silence once again descended upon this lost world.
There was only one variable for which he couldn't account, if it was even a variable at all.
He pictured the carcasses they had disinterred from the bundles buried in the statuary. A shiver rippled down his spine. He chased away the thought. Surely nothing like that could have survived this long, even so high in the unexplored Andes. Never mind the fact that the desiccated corpses couldn't have been more than several hundred years old or the fact that Jones had been mercilessly ripped apart in a manner consistent with what he would have expected. There was no problem that couldn't be solved by the assault rifle on his shoulder. He would stay vigilant, and unlike Jones, he was an excellent soldier. Nothing on this planet would be able to catch him unaware. Not even those hideous creatures from the filthy mummy wraps.
"Are you ready to do this?" McMasters asked. He shrugged his pack into place on his shoulders and clasped his Colt IAR in both hands. "If we want to be in position before nightfall, we'd better get moving."
Tasker looked to the sky. Between the low ceiling of storm clouds and the elongating shadow of the mountain peak, darkness would soon be upon them. The thrill of the endgame surged through him.
"After you," he said, gesturing to the line of sloppy tracks that led into the dense forest.
He followed his temporary partner into the jungle for the culmination of the hunt that had begun many miles and days ago.
In a matter of hours, a new river would flow, a river of blood, and a fortune in gold would be his.
Chapter Nine
I
Andes Mountains, Peru
October 30th
4:49 p.m. PET
Morton and Webber no longer stood guard over the tunnel into the cliff when they arrived. Winded, Sam slowed to a jog, while Merritt fell back behind her and stopped dead in his tracks. She was soaked to the bone, and every muscle ached from the high altitude exertion. She tried not to think about everything she had seen, but the images of the remains shoved to the forefront of her mind in grainy still-lifes reminiscent of old crime scene photographs. The memories were sterile enough to allow her to distance herself from them; however, the implications assaulted her like fresh wounds inflicted in her gray matter.
Somewhere along the trail, they had passed from the world she knew and understood, through the residua of a past she had until now only been able to imagine, into a nightmare landscape of bloodshed and death.
And even now, she couldn't help but be amazed by the sights that greeted her when she entered the dark crevice.
Jay flicked on the light mounted to his camera and directed it at the walls as they pressed deeper into the mountain. Countless recessed arches had been chiseled into the stone and filled with bones. The skulls faced her, while the rest of the jumbled skeletons had been crammed into the spaces behind them. A quick flicker of gold reflected the light.
"Did you see that?" Sam asked. "Shine your light over there again."
Jay directed the beam back into the alcove. A golden sparkle winked through the optic canal in the skull's eye socket.
"There's something inside," he said.
Sam reached through the sticky spider webs and lifted the aged skull from the centuries of accumulated dust. The occipital portion of the cranium had been cut away to create room for the object that rested on the rock shelf. It was egg-shaped and filigreed with a golden design fused to the rounded surface, a stunning piece of craftsmanship. More obsidian, she realized. The volcanic rock had been smoothed and polished, and decorated with a stylized image that depicted a man made of squares holding a sharp-toothed monster with a plume of feathers on its head at bay with a spear.
"It's an Ica stone," she gasped. Her world had suddenly tilted on its ear.
She replaced the skull over the stone and moved to the next archway. Similarly lifting the cracked skull, she exposed another stone nearly identical to the first, only the man in the design appeared to be riding the back of a dragon as it tried to snap back over his shoulder at him.
Ica stones were widely considered hoaxes, their authenticity refuted by any scholar worth his salt. They were originally discovered in a cave in the vicinity of the coastal town of Ica, Peru in the Sixties. While supposedly created by the Inca, they depicted knowledge and events beyond the scope of their limited comprehension. Everything from open heart surgery and tracheotomies to flying saucers and dinosaurs. All things that should have been well beyond their ability to conjure, even in their wildest dreams, which led to the common conclusion that they had to be fakes. Radiocarbon dating had been useless in ascertaining their age as the test could only determine the approximate era that the obsidian was formed, and not the time when the designs had been carved. And the others were merely etched, not overlaid with gold like these were.
Now here she was, staring at them in an ancient ossuary where they couldn't possibly have been planted by modern man. They weren't just decorative ornamentation either. They were death stones, renditions of something of consequence to the decedent. She moved down the row, raising cranium after cranium to uncover more stones, all of which bore representations of a man in mortal combat with the same fanged and plumed creature. Was this tunnel where their warriors were interred? A quick glance in either direction confirmed that all of the bones were roughly the same size. None of them had belonged to children. Was it possible that these depictions somehow represented their deaths?
The faint sound of buzzing brought her back to reality.
There wasn't enough time to waste any more right now. Lord only knew what was out there in the ruins, stalking them.
From ahead, she heard the distant sound of voices, made hollow by the acoustics, the words indecipherable over the drone of flies. She turned in their direction and proceeded into the darkness. The light from the camera veered to follow, casting her elongated shadow across the ground in front of---
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