Morgan’s target headed for the set of stairs used by the BridgeClimb tourists as they descended from the main arch. Because the last tour group had come down hours ago, at least she didn’t have to contend with bystanders getting in her way.
The Russian climbed the stairs leading up to the vehicle deck two at a time. The steps were so steep that it was nearly a ladder, with switchback platforms every five yards.
Morgan reached the stairs, holstered her pistol, and began climbing after him. She could see that her quarry had made the mistake of trying to climb without holstering his weapon, so he was hampered enough for her to be able to make up the distance.
She was just one platform below him when he turned to fire. He got off two shots that caromed off metal before the slide locked back, indicating he was out of ammo.
She had him.
He hurled the pistol at her, catching her in the shoulder, but she ignored the blast of pain.
As he reached the vehicle deck, which still bustled with cars and trucks, she lunged for his feet. He kicked, barely missing her hand, and kept going.
On the next platform, she could take the shot that would disable him. Then it would be an easy task to haul him in.
At the vehicle deck, the stairs were wrapped with a ten-foot-high steel mesh cage to keep the BridgeClimb hikers from exiting onto the sidewalk. Instead of continuing up, the Russian grabbed the top of the cage, intending to vault over it and onto the sidewalk. If he did that, he might get into a car before Morgan could stop him.
She leaped up, but she didn’t try to latch onto him. She pushed the exposed soles of his feet, toppling him over the side of the cage before he was ready.
He somersaulted over the edge, tumbling off the sidewalk and onto train tracks.
Morgan climbed up, drew her pistol, and aimed down at him, covering any possible escape.
With her free hand, she dialed her police contact to tell him that she had the subject ready for apprehension near the south pylon.
The Russian, seeing that he was caught, stood and put his hands over his head.
Her contact answered, but before she could make her report, the squeal of metal brakes interrupted her.
The Russian must have realized what was coming a split second before it happened. His mouth made a silent O just as a train roared through the pylon and smashed into him.
* * *
Grant wondered where in the hell this idiot thought he could go.
They were running up the arched spine of the bridge, and Grant wasn’t afraid to admit he was starting to get winded. The guy he was chasing was wiry, with more of a runner’s body, so Grant could do no better than keep pace behind him.
For some reason, the man had forsaken the chance to go over the metal cage they’d passed and onto the bridge deck. He just kept climbing until he was padding up the inclined walkway, only a thin steel railing on either side between him and a long and lethal drop to the road deck below.
Up ahead Grant saw what the guy was heading for. The bridge had four maintenance cranes that jutted from small sheds. The sheds housed the equipment to lower the maintenance platform that dangled over the side like a window washer’s scaffold. The shed also encased the motor used to move the crane up and down the arch’s span. Each housing was pierced by a small tunnel over the walkway to let the tourist climbers pass through.
If the Russian could get to the closest of the cranes, he’d use the platform to lower himself to a walkway below and climb down one of the ladders to the vehicle deck. Given that there was only one scaffold, Grant would have no way to follow.
He wasn’t going to let that happen no matter what Morgan said.
He’d have one chance, when the man was getting onto the scaffold suspended from the crane’s wires. After that the man could train his full attention on shooting Grant, who would have to lean awkwardly over the side to have any kind of shot.
When the man got to the crane, he turned and fired some covering shots, and Grant went prone. The man was at the very limit of Grant’s range, and the odd geometry of the arch made the shot even tougher.
But this was Grant’s best opportunity. The gunman began climbing onto the hanging platform.
Grant fired. It hit. Right leg.
Bull’s-eye. Morgan would be proud.
The man reflexively grabbed his thigh, releasing his grip on the platform. His left foot, which was already planted on the platform, sent it swinging away from the bridge. He tried to regain his balance, but his feet were too far apart to recover. He scrabbled to grab hold of anything he could and came away clutching nothing but air.
With a terrified scream, the man plunged through the space between the bridge and platform. The sound didn’t stop until he smacked into the road below.
Grant got to his feet and leaned over the railing. Blood pooled around the head of the corpse. No way this one was going to talk.
Grant frowned at the mess. “Huh,” he said. “I really thought that would work.”
THIRTY-FIVE
It was when Tyler got to the astronaut drawing that Jess knew something was wrong.
As Fay explained to them, the astronaut figure depicted on the Nazca plain was one of the primary reasons that ancient alien theorists thought that spacemen had helped the Nazca people draw the lines. It was a simple humanoid with one armed raised and the other at its side. Although it had two legs, the head was round with the eyes being its only distinguishing features. Because the nose and mouth were missing, some thought it looked more like an alien creature than a human.
It seemed a stretch to Jess. To her it resembled a slightly more complicated stick figure. So what if the designers forgot to put the mouth on.
The astronaut drawing on the ceiling wasn’t the issue. There was a second one at the end of the story drawn on the walls. It was identical to the ceiling figure, except this one was drawn with a large round object in its raised right hand.
Tyler had taken out a small electronic device and was circling the room, waving it over the walls until he reached the astronaut drawing. He stopped, and a strange look crossed his face. He took the Leatherman from his belt and unfolded the knife. Fay yelped when she saw him dig into the lower hand of the astronaut with the blade.
“You’ll damage it!” Fay yelled.
“Sorry, Fay,” Tyler said, and pried at the etching until a stone divot fell from the wall.
When Jess’s flashlight passed across the resulting hole, a multi-hued glint reflected the light. It was about a tenth the diameter of the object in the raised hand, but this wasn’t drawn on. It was embedded in the wall.
Tyler checked his device’s display, and even in the dim light she could see his expression of alarm. He shouted toward the entrance.
“Polk, I’m going to need the case from the truck!” When he got an affirmative, he turned to Fay and Jess. “Let’s step to the other side of the chamber.
“Why?” Jess said. “What is that device?”
“It’s a radiation meter.”
Instead of retreating, Fay moved closer to the dime-sized object. “That’s radioactive?”
“Please, Fay, step back.”
“How dangerous is it?”
“We’ll be okay provided we don’t stay here too long.”
They moved to the opposite side.
“All right,” Jess said, “I think we deserve to know what’s going on.”
Tyler paused for a moment, then sighed. “Fay, can you turn off your video camera, please?”
Fay looked puzzled, but complied.
“I’m not supposed to tell you because it’s classified,” Tyler said, “but you’re right. You need to know the risks. What I’m about to say could send me to prison. You cannot under any circumstances talk about this with anyone else. Do you understand?”
She and Fay both nodded in bewilderment.
“The material embedded in the wall is called xenobium, a form of the element hafnium. We think the Nazca people found it after
an explosion in their region. One of its properties is that it emits gamma radiation. I was hoping we wouldn’t find any, which was why I didn’t say anything until now.”
“That’s the reason Morgan Bell sent the Air Force jet to bring us here?” Jess asked. “This is related to the truck bomb in Australia, isn’t it?”
“In a way. They stole a weapon called the Killswitch. This material is the trigger that powers it. If the people who have the Killswitch got their hands on this, it could result in a devastating terrorist attack.”
They stayed to one side of the chamber until Polk called from the entrance that he had the case. Tyler ran out and came back carrying what looked like an aluminum suitcase, but by the way he was holding it, it seemed to be much heavier than Jess would have thought.
“Lead-lined case. Agent Bell gave it to us in the event that we found any xenobium.”
Tyler pried at the hole until the xenobium popped out and rolled across the floor.
“Put a light on it, but don’t touch it.”
Tyler used the pliers on his Leatherman to pluck the xenobium off the floor. Jess had a hard time believing that something the size of a pea could be lethal.
He put it inside the foam interior of the case and closed the lid. After another wave of the radiation meter, he declared that the gamma emissions were back down to a normal level.
Jess returned to look at the story on the wall and saw that it made perfect sense now.
“So the Nazca people found the xenobium,” she said, “but they didn’t realize it was deadly until those with extended exposure started to get sick and die. Why bring it here?”
“We may never know,” Fay said. “Perhaps they brought a small piece with them as an offering of thanks to the gods wherever they landed.”
Tyler pointed to the astronaut figure. “Look at his hands. This bit of xenobium was in his left hand. The right hand is raised holding with an object that is much bigger.”
“The drawing would imply that they left a larger piece behind somewhere in Nazca,” Jess said.
“Then we need to find it before anyone else does,” Tyler said, aiming his flashlight at the ceiling. “But where is it?”
Fay pointed at the Mandala geometric figure on the ceiling. “See the starburst in the center? It looks like the explosion is taking place there. It could be that the Nazca people saw the fireball come down from space, and when they went to investigate, they found the xenobium.”
Tyler walked over to the pyramid in the pictogram story. “Notice how the Mandala looks like the overhead view of a pyramid. Now look at the lines in the overhead chart. If you follow them, they go from the Mandala, through every one of the animals, and then straight to the Cahuachi pyramid.”
“Of course!” Fay shouted in triumph. “The Nazca would have wanted to protect their find from thieves and separate it from the main population so that the people wouldn’t get sick. The priests would have been the only ones allowed to have access to it. Not only would they hide how to get inside the pyramid, they would have constructed booby traps to keep invaders from taking the treasure. But they didn’t want to hide it so well that the gods wouldn’t find it.”
“The gods weren’t very powerful if they needed instructions,” Tyler said.
“They weren’t considered infallible like the God of Abraham.”
“The pyramid would have been pretty noticeable at the time. Why not just put a big drawing on top of it to draw the gods there?”
“The Nazca might have thought the gods would return to the Mandala to retrieve their treasure. So they created the lines as a pathway to lead the gods from there to Cahuachi. It’s only ten miles away from the Mandala.”
“But the Tunguska blast was huge,” Jess said. “Wouldn’t a similar explosion have destroyed Cahuachi?”
“We don’t know if Cahuachi was built before or after the explosion,” Tyler said. “Maybe it was destroyed and then rebuilt. Fay said the city was only uncovered fifty years ago, and it’s still being excavated.”
“On the other hand, we could be wrong,” Fay said. “The xenobium could be buried at the Mandala and the pyramid has nothing to do with it. But won’t it be fun to find out?”
Fay’s giddy excitement was contagious, and Jess couldn’t help getting caught up in it.
“Have the archaeologists discovered any way inside the pyramid?”
“A few chambers, but to my knowledge they’ve never found anything like that metal.”
“If the Nazca line drawings form a code,” Tyler said, “how does it tell the gods where to find it?
“I’ve been thinking about this,” Jess said. “If these are astrological symbols representing constellations, then they must go in order from the beginning to the end of the year. The straight lines connecting them could be the pathway that Nana mentioned.”
“We can figure out the astrological link by matching the dots in the symbols to star charts. The question is, how does that tell us where to go in the pyramid?”
“Maybe the symbols have something to do with that as well.”
“We’ll try to figure that out on our way there,” Fay said. Then her voice took on an awed tone. “This could be the single greatest discovery of pre-Columbian archaeology, even though it’s found on Easter Island. Not only does it prove that the descendants of Nazca people came here, but it also provides an answer for the mystery of the Nazca lines.”
“Are you sure you’re up for more travel?” Jess said.
“If you ask me that one more time, I’m going to put you over my knee.”
Tyler laughed. “I’d like to see that. All right, you two. We’re all going.”
When they exited the cave, Tyler handed the case to Polk. “Take this to the car and bring Harris back with you to help us reset the boulder.”
“I’ll go with him,” Fay said. “I want to load this video onto my laptop.”
Jess smiled. Most of her friend’s grandmothers were afraid to even touch a computer, let alone download video. Polk led Fay back up the trail.
“Why put the stone back in place?” Jess said. “Colchev doesn’t have the map.”
“We don’t want anyone else to retrace our steps and find the cave until we’re ready to reveal it to the world. Once the stone is covering the opening, I’ll add some marks on the ground to disguise the ones we made.”
Jess gave Tyler a quick hug. “Thanks for being honest with us.”
“It’s only fair. You’re both sticking your necks out to help.”
“Yes, but we dragged you into this. You could have blown us off in New Zealand.”
Tyler leaned against the cliff face. “Remember in college when you asked me why I was in ROTC?”
“Something about your dad saying you shouldn’t do it.”
“Well, there was that. But it was really because of my father that I did it. His service in the military inspired me. It sounds corny, but there’s a lot to be said for being part of something greater than yourself.”
“Then why did you leave the Army?”
“The prospect of getting blown up all the time was one big reason.”
“Did Karen have anything to do with your decision?”
Tyler nodded. “Not because she forced me to, but because being with her was being part of something greater than myself. She was good for my soul. Boy, that sounds like a sentiment on a greeting card.”
Jess stroked his arm in a comforting gesture. “I think it’s sweet. I’d kill to get a greeting card like that. But what does it have to do with this trip to Easter Island?”
“Do you know what Grant and I were doing in New Zealand? Testing the performance of a new car in winter conditions. Fun and important work, but not earth-shattering.”
Jess nodded. “Our find here is earth-shattering.”
“Exactly. The last few years I’ve been part of discoveries that have been revolutionary.”
“And saved a lot of lives in the process. Yes, I did follow your exploits in
the news, even though you shunned the press and kept your private life out of the stories.”
“Grant is the glory hound, not me.”
“So you do it for another reason.”
“After Karen’s death, I thought the world had ended. And it had, for me. But since then I’ve realized that I don’t want to go through the motions in life. I want to make a difference. Not to have my name in the history books, but because it’s what makes me feel worthwhile.”
Jess’s lip curled into a grin. “So you’re being selfish, is what you’re saying.”
“See? You get me. You always—”
Before Tyler could finish, he was interrupted by a honking horn, then the clatter of gunfire.
THIRTY-SIX
Before his private jet had landed on Easter Island an hour earlier, Colchev’s men in Sydney reported that they were leaving the hotel after Kessler no-showed, which meant this path to the xenobium was his only option. He didn’t hear from his men again, so he had to assume that they’d been caught or worse.
With the next flight to Easter Island from Peru not scheduled to arrive until later that evening, the only other jet on the island was a C-17, which must have been sent by the Americans to intercept Colchev. The Gulfstream’s refueling stop in Tahiti had to be the reason the Air Force had beaten him here. The C-17’s range was much farther, so it could fly nonstop, perhaps even refueling in mid-air on the way. Colchev’s jet had to go far out of the way to make the vast distance across the Pacific.
He was sure that the Americans noted his Gulfstream’s arrival, but the tail number would only lead them to the billionaire’s front company based in the Bahamas. Still, seeing a bunch of men step off the plane would raise suspicions, so Colchev had hired two models in Sydney to come along on the trip. When the private jet landed and went through the cursory immigration and customs check, the observers on the C-17 would see two of his men, Kiselow and Chopiak, deplane with the girls and think they were nothing more than extravagant tourists.
The Roswell Conspiracy Page 20