Lost City of the Templars

by Paul Christopher

  His weapon of choice would not be a gun; he traveled too much for that. It would be a knife hidden to look like something else or even more likely a garrote masquerading as an extra pair of shoelaces for the nicely scuffed shoes he wore. He was prepared for either—the advantage of having been a Boy Scout and perhaps one even Lord Baden-Powell would have approved of, considering the origins of his own expertise.

  All of this went through Calthrop’s mind in under a minute, watching as the man shuffled across the terminal floor to the ticket wicket. Calthrop kept watching as the man purchased his ticket and headed for the platform. He was traveling on the Artesia. Calthrop gave the man in the Ivy League cap a little head start, then followed the man sent to kill him onto the train.

  • • •

  Yachay, shaman and chief of the river people, had been running through the forest for many days now. He had no real idea of the time or distance he’d traveled, following only the whispering of his gods and the directions given to him through the xhenhet. He kept a wadded paste combined with bark from the magnolia in the side of his cheek, spitting it out and replacing it with another lump from the small leather bag tied around his waist.

  They had already found the packs of explosives in the cache where his friend from the Mountain of the Gods had left them, and now the fifty warriors strung out behind him, each carried twenty-five kilograms of the magic death-bringer and killer of monsters—a little more than two tons of plasticized pentaerythritol tetranitrate, perhaps the most violent plastic explosive in the world and the essential ingredient in its better-known relative, Semtex.

  Two tons of the pentaerythritol tetranitrate detonated with a small length of Primacord would be more than enough to rip the huge dam apart and send the waters that were the life of the river people back on its natural course. Detonation was simple since the detonation of a single molded handful of the Silly Putty substance would automatically detonate all the packs placed around it.

  Yachay suddenly stopped, one hand lifted to stop the men behind them. He had lived his life in the forest and by the river and knew its sounds and smells, its creatures and the very air in the treetops above his head as though it were his own heart beating in his chest and his own lungs breathing. He could not say what it was or where it came from, but there was something wrong. A vibration, a sound out of the symphony of the forest and rippling of the river. A thought stirring and saying only one thing. Run! Run now!

  22

  The Canadair firebombers, tail identification spray-painted out, came in low, following the heat-signal directions given to them by the Super Tucanos flying surveillance in front of the slower-moving Canadairs.

  It was almost dusk as the six aircraft dropped down even lower to two hundred feet, where they dropped the thick streams of jellied gasoline from the specially involved nozzles in their tanks, raining the napalm mixture down on the jungle below.

  With the viscous mixture dripping from the forest canopy, two following Super Tucanos fired a total of eight M156 white phosphorous rockets into the center of the napalm path below and then immediately peeled away over the remains of the Itaqui River Basin, their pilots knowing the effect the rockets would have.

  As the trigger charges in the rockets’ proximity fuses struck, the rockets’ white-hot explosions served as igniter for the napalm torrent that had followed only moments before. On the ground the aerated gasoline exploded, sucking the oxygen out of the air more effectively than any vacuum pump, immediately creating a mini-Dresden, a firestorm that blossomed out of nowhere, destroying, charring and liquefying everything in its path.

  Had the two following Tucanos not peeled away as quickly as they did, the empty hole in the atmosphere would have sucked them down like the turbulence caused by the sinking of the Titanic. Even at that the aircraft barely issued being engulfed by the huge, towering billow of fire that hurled itself up out of the rain forest like a biblical warning from God.

  Yachay had presciently felt the aircraft coming to him with their cargoes of death at least a minute before the first aircraft arrived and almost two minutes before the napalm was ignited. He had acted on the inner voices of his gods, at once calling out a warning as he turned away from the edge of the jungle close to the drying riverbed, racing deeper into the forest where his only protection lay.

  It was not to be. The rolling pressure wave struck him in the back like a hammer, throwing him to the forest floor, and then the gigantic blowback from the fireball sucked into the center of the white-hot maelstrom. In his last split second of consciousness as his lungs swallowed fire, Yachay knew that there were no gods and never had been and with that terrible sadness filling him he happily gave himself to the dark, unable to scream his fury as his lungs shriveled to cinders and his body vaporized.

  • • •

  It had been a coordinated attack, the firebombing coming at the same time as the White Star C130 Hercules dropped its seventy-man stick of paratroopers and two White Star MI26 helicopters each landed a contingent of highly trained commandos on the summit of the mountain. At the mountain’s base five of the paratroopers from the Hercules dropped with pinpoint accuracy at the mouth of the huge cavern holding the Devil’s Throat and immediately began firing on Francisco Garibaldi and the already gagged Tanaki, who had previously been captured by Garibaldi. Three of the commandos took up their stations around the Devil’s Throat and waited for further orders while the other two carried the bodies into the jungle and buried them in shallow graves before decomposition set in.

  • • •

  “We must leave immediately,” said a frightened-looking Hiram. The paratroopers were dropping into the canyon by the dozen.

  “Hold on,” said Holliday, watching as the paratroopers descended. They were using rectangular “ram air” canopies, the same guided system the U.S. Skydiving Team used, picking their spots in small clearings on the canyon floor. “We have to think this through. Is there anyplace the box can be hidden where these guys won’t find it? We can’t take it with us. It’s far too heavy.”

  “Yes.” Hiram nodded, pulling himself together. He clapped his hands and the bearers reappeared. He gave them a quick order and they took the ossuary out of the main chamber on its litter.

  “We must leave now. We’re running out of time.”

  “I heard choppers. The summit is certain to be crawling with men. Is there any other way we can leave without climbing the stairs?”

  “There is a hidden way,” said Fawcett.

  “Take us to it.”

  Led by Fawcett and Hiram, both carrying fuming wick lamps, Holliday, Peggy, Eddie and Rafi maneuvered their way through a convoluted labyrinth of tunnels and small caves until they finally reached a large narrow cavern with a narrow stream running down its center.

  There were half a dozen men already waiting. Instead of the tunics Holliday was used to seeing the people in, these men were dressed in dungarees and ragged shirts, their feet encased in rubber tire sandals. Strapped to their backs were large wicker baskets.

  “Enough supplies to take you to the Essequibo River and then upriver to Bartica.” Hiram took a step back and bowed deeply. “Good luck,” he said. “May all the gods be with you and protect you on your journey.”

  “You’re not coming?” Holliday asked.

  “I cannot leave my people.”

  “They will kill you, my friend,” said Eddie. “These are hard people.”

  “Then I will die,” said Hiram, shrugging. “That is my fate. Now go.”

  With Fawcett leading the way, the others followed him along the path of the stream to a small exit covered by drooping fire vine. Parting the vine, they ducked out through the opening into the dusky evening light.

  A few yards outside the opening, a striking man with snow-white hair stood calmly, backed by an eight-man squad. The white-haired man was dressed in paratrooper camo, puttees wrapped over the high tops of his jump boots. He had a white star on one breast pocket and a wide silver stripe on t
he other.

  “Dr. Fawcett, Colonel Holliday, I presume?” He turned to his squad and nodded. Six members of the squad lifted their modified Stokes MK22 handguns, aimed and then fired at almost point-blank range.

  • • •

  James Calthrop waited until they reached the railway terminal in Parma for a ten-minute stop to switch crews. He stepped out onto the platform for a cigarette and looked up and down the sleeping car from the outside. All the curtains were fully drawn and there was no light to be seen anywhere. A hundred-euro bribe to the trainman had purchased him the compartment number of the man he’d seen at Bercy Station, and beyond that Calthrop was already well prepared.

  The man would not likely make his attack until after Florence, the last stop before reaching Rome. That way there would be the least chance of discovery, and before the body was found the killer would have more than enough time to disappear into the throngs of people at the busiest railway terminal in Italy.

  The warning horn sounded, the trainman at the head end blew his whistle and Calthrop tossed down the butt of his cigarette and stepped back on the train, the automatic door swishing shut. There was a sudden surge of motion, and they moved smoothly out of the station and into the suburban darkness of Bologna.

  Calthrop moved without hesitation. He dipped his hand into his pocket briefly, slipped on a pair of leather gloves and then walked down the barely lit corridor and rapped quietly on his quarry’s door.

  “Scusa, signor …”

  The response was too quick and alert. The killer was wide-awake. “Chi è?”

  “Il controllore, signor.”

  “Un momento.”

  Calthrop drew the silenced Berretta Tomcat from its sling under his arm and waited for the click of the killer’s latch being opened. When it came he put his left shoulder against the door and heaved forward, expecting the resistant body of the killer. Instead there was nothing and he went tumbling into the compartment, barely able to bring his hand up to his neck before the loop of steel wire was dropped around it.

  The wire, a diamond-dust bead reamer and cutter, bit through the glove but didn’t fare so well when it struck the leather bondage collar under Calthrop’s shirt—purchased the previous day at La Passage du Désir on Rue St. Martin.

  There was a split second of hesitation at the unexpected resistance to the nearly razor-sharp device, and the man strained harder. To exert that kind of force meant the killer’s head was almost certainly tilted back, and aiming blindly, Calthrop lifted the Tomcat and fired. The small .22-caliber round struck the man under the chin, went through the tongue and palate and then entered the skull, slicing up into the brain and ricocheting several times until it lodged somewhere in the chewed-up remains of the corpus callosum. The killer was a corpse before he knew he’d taken his last breath. There was almost no blood.

  Calthrop, on the other hand, was bleeding profusely. The killer dropped to the floor and Calthrop staggered toward the little bathroom cubicle. He dropped down onto the toilet, grabbed one of the thin towels off the rack, then gently peeled off his glove. The bead reamer had cut through the leather and deeply into the flesh of his index and middle fingers. Feeling a little faint, he wrapped the towel around his hand tightly, then lifted the bound hand and stuffed it into the sling that held the Tomcat holster, keeping it raised. He leaned back and closed his eyes, willing the light-headed feeling to fade away. He wasn’t finished yet and he had to think clearly.

  Calthrop gave himself ten minutes, then stood, left the cubicle and eased himself around the dead body. If things had gone as he’d hoped they would, he would have put the killer into his bunk and pulled the blankets over him. Like Calthrop, the man had purchased a through ticket to Rome and no one would check his compartment until they arrived at their final destination. As it was, that option was impossible now, so he simply stepped over the body, peeked out into the corridor to make sure the way was clear and returned to his own compartment, locking the door behind him.

  Once inside, he took down his overnight bag, pulled out a spare shirt and using the scissors on his Swiss Army knife, he sliced into the fabric, eventually cutting half a dozen long strips. That done, he took the strips to the bathroom, turned on the tap over the sink and then gingerly unbound the towel around his hand. The wounds weren’t as bad as he’d thought, but they definitely needed attention. He dropped the bloody towel into the sink, then used three of the strips from his shirt to bind the two fingers tightly together and finally wound the rest of the strips around his entire hand. He waited for a few moments, but no blood seeped through. He looked into the mirror over the sink, dabbed away a small blob of some sort of human tissue on his cheek and then went back into the compartment. He tore the plastic refuse bag off the wall beside the toilet, dropped the bloody towel as well as the bondage collar and the ruined shirt into it, then stuffed it into his overnight bag. He sat down on the edge of his bunk and waited. At seven sixteen the train arrived at the Florence terminal. Calthrop picked up the overnight back with his good hand, left his compartment and stepped off the train a few moments later, disappearing into the anonymous crowd on the platform.

  • • •

  Constantine sat in one of the worn upholstered chairs in the apartment reading today’s edition of La Repubblica. It was late, past twelve now, and the Paris–Rome train arrived just after nine. His breakfast of a cannoli and coffee was nothing but crumbs and dregs in his cup on the small table to his right. He wasn’t surprised; in fact, he’d been expecting something like this.

  There was a triple rap on the door of the apartment. “Enter.”

  Calthrop stepped into the front room. He looked tired but alert. His left hand was neatly wrapped in surgical bandage.

  “Hurt?” Constantine asked, his voice mild.

  “A little,” said Calthrop. “You don’t seem surprised to see me.”

  “I’m not, particularly,” said Constantine, lowering the newspaper.

  “You sent someone to kill me.”

  “You knew too much.”

  “He failed,” said Calthrop, taking the Tomcat out from under his jacket.

  “One of you had to,” said Constantine. “It was simply a matter of which of you it was going to be.”

  “Now I’m going to kill you,” said Calthrop.

  Constantine fired the Tanfoglio T95 from underneath the newspaper, striking Calthrop twice in the chest and once in the abdomen.

  “Not if I kill you first,” said Constantine to the dead man.

  23

  Holliday came to, feeling as if someone were running a clattering old wringer washer inside his skull. For a long time he kept his eyes closed, pretty sure that opening them wasn’t going to make the wringer washer stop any faster.

  He lay there, letting things come back slowly. The last thing he remembered clearly was the squad of soldiers standing in front of them and the white-haired old pro with the silver stripe on his camo BDUs.

  He remembered that the camo was old-fashioned Vietnam-era Tiger Stripe pattern, which the U.S. Army hadn’t used in forty years. Ergo, these guys weren’t regulars.

  He had a vague recollection of a white star on the BDUs, and then he had it. He’d read somewhere that Black Hawk Security, Kate Sinclair’s organization through the Pallas Group, had recently changed its name to White Star. His heart sank. Kate Sinclair again, still searching for the relic she thought would mitigate all the foul deeds done to get it. The personification of the ends justifying the means even though it meant ruining lives that got in her way.

  He remembered the men firing from only a few yards away. He must have been hit, but all he felt was a deep bruiselike sensation on the right side of his ribs. After that there was nothing but a jumbled blur. He let a little more time pass, breathing slowly and deeply, taking in as much oxygen as he could. He wasn’t dead, that was clear enough, but he’d almost certainly been drugged—that was the washing machine doing the fandango in his skull.

  The blur of frac
tured memory began to resolve itself. Rotors. He listened to the memory: the distinct humming, thundering blender sounds of a big Jolly Green Giant like the ones they’d used for spec-ops in Vietnam. Twenty-five troops in full gear with a range of seven hundred miles if you stuck an extra tank somewhere. More than enough to take them to a base on the Atlantic Coast, probably Guyana.

  After that, nothing, or next to nothing. Maybe the sound of a big diesel engine lumbering to life, and definitely a reek of shrimp or clams or some sort of crustacean. Then a quick sharp pain and blackness again.

  A boat then, probably a trawler of some kind. But how long had he been out and where was he now? He sniffed; his own clothes smelled like rotting fish, but the air was dry and stale.

  There was no sense that he was close to the ocean, or at least not close enough to smell it in the air. On a guess he was somewhere that hadn’t been used for a very long time.

  The wringer washer was fading now, so he opened his eyes slowly. His eyes were gummy with a crust of old protein on the eyelids. He’d been out for a few days at the very least. His eyes squinted open. No natural light, just a low-watt bulb behind a wire cage in the ceiling and nothing else.

  He pulled himself into a sitting position and took stock of his surroundings. He was on an old-fashioned cot that could very well have been army issue at one time.