“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. It was simply an insurance policy your father took out on your behalf. Many of my workers do the same.”
Demyan smiled at the lie. No one working in the Yakutsk diamond mine could afford to take out such an extravagant policy. He wondered what his father could possibly have been involved in to provide so much money. “All the same, I must thank you for coming all this way to deliver it.”
“You’re welcome. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“No.”
“All right. I’m sorry for your loss.”
Demyan watched as Leo Botkin, the bearer of his great fortune and misfortune, left. He looked at the sorry log hut that a week earlier was considered the home of all four members of his family. Now he was all that was left. Well, I’m not going to die here. He packed what few possessions he had into a small rucksack.
When the goods truck came the next morning, he hitched a ride to Yakutsk and from there a flight to Moscow.
His mind was sharp and he was already stronger than most adults. He was now rich. He would survive, and he would make something of his life – someone in his family needed to get out of Oymyakon.
He would leave and never think about the family he’d lost, or his village again.
Chapter One
Tepui Mountains, Amazon Jungle, Venezuela – Present Day
The Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk banked hard as it rounded one of the fortress-like giant stones that rose from the dark green canopy of the jungle. It crossed the rocky tabletop mountain in almost absolute silence, before dipping its nose and descending the steep sandstone cliffs into the ancient valley below. The nose was soon brought to level, and its angular, radar-disrupting fuselage, heavily modified for stealth, skimmed the tips of the dense forest canopy as it raced by at sixty knots.
Inside, Dr. Billie Swan peered into the inky blackness. Her face displayed all the signs of a person who hadn’t slept much in the past 24 hours. Despite that, her intelligent hazel eyes appeared sharp and focused. The dark of the moonless night shrouded the most stunning and potentially deadly landscape as it shot past them. Hundreds of feet of sheer sandstone cliffs, topped with dense jungle foliage, and torrents of water dropping over the edges of the tabletops into pools below – all hid one of the world’s oldest and most mysterious cave systems, carved from quartz sandstone.
In the cockpit, wearing military grade night-vision goggles, were Sam Reilly and Tom Bower. Billie smiled at the image. The two men made an unlikely pair. Sam was shorter and stocky, while Tom was tall… and even broader in the shoulders. Both had been good friends since childhood. Both had spent time in the U.S. military as helicopter pilots, before Sam took over the salvage branch of his father’s shipping company, bringing Tom with him.
Her lips formed the crest of a half-smile as she watched Tom at the controls. It required constant minor and major adjustments of the three major controls. The collective pitch, cyclic pitch and the antitorque pedals moved in one constantly changing triangle. Despite the complex task, he looked more like someone out for an evening date in a sports car. In this case, the sports car was an experimental, nearly silent, stealth helicopter, worth millions of dollars, on loan from the U.S. Defense Department.
She had dated him for a while. If things had been different, she might have even married him. But things weren’t different. Like her grandfather before her, she had dedicated her life to finding the remnants of an ancient race, nicknamed the Master Builders. That life didn’t leave a lot of time for relationships. She could live with that. She’d always seen herself as her own master. Besides, Tom was now dating Genevieve, and he seemed happy.
Everyone was still waiting for there to be conflict between her and Genevieve now that she was back, and they were working closely together. It never happened. Never would. Billie never understood jealousy. She’d made the decision to leave Tom to find the Master Builders. By the time she came back, he was with someone else. No harm, no foul. Besides, she liked Genevieve. She had that sort of assertive, hard ass personality that didn’t take shit from anyone. Her personality was backed up by the fact that she’d spent many of her younger years as an enforcer in the Russian Mafia. Genevieve kind of reminded her of Geena Davis in that nineties movie, The Long Kiss Goodnight.
Tom swore and banked hard.
Billie’s head snapped around toward the cockpit windshield. The Black Hawk banked at a ninety-degree angle and narrowly slipped past another giant pillar of stone. Tom audibly thanked divine providence and the Northrop Grumman Corporation for the cockpit upgrade that simplified his instrument panel into a few multi-functional flat-panel displays that alerted him to the close encounter.
Sam just grinned, as though he’d come along for the ride.
It was another day in the office. The Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk was ideal for their current mission deep into the Amazon jungle. Equipped with stealth technology, the bird’s illegal route across two borders and into Venezuela was untraceable by radar or any other tracking method.
They were flying low and dangerously. Though that phrase was relative when the surface was already an alpine valley some 7000 feet in elevation above sea level. Billie decided it was best not to know how close they were to death, and turned her head to face the other members of the team in the back of the Black Hawk.
Veyron Blanc, Sam’s chief engineer, sat opposite her. He made a practiced smile, full of teeth, and a knowing look in reference to their near-death experience. “It’s good to be back working with Sam again, isn’t it?”
“I’ll let you know if we survive.” Billie cursed, and then said, “If I could have done this without him, I would have.”
Veyron nodded, as though he was enjoying her discomfort.
She’d had a love-hate relationship with Sam for many years now, in their combined search for the Master Builders. There was plenty of respect for him professionally and no interest romantically. Where they clashed often stemmed from their expertise. They were both used to being in charge of any situation. Like the age-old saying goes, you can’t have two chefs in one kitchen. She didn’t like being anyone’s subordinate, even when the pay was good. She was good at what she did, and expected everyone around her to keep up. Sometimes, that need manifested in the form of being a bitch, which had made her highly unpopular at times.
Next to Veyron sat Elise. She was the youngest in their crew. Somewhere around her mid-twenties at a guess, and probably the smartest of the lot of them. She was a computer expert, who provided Sam with access to anything he required – legal or otherwise. Rumor had it, she once worked for the CIA as a hacker. When she lost interest in the job, and the government was less than keen to release someone with her knowledge and skills back into civilian society, Elise hacked into the U.S. Vital Records office and created a new identity for herself.
At the back of the cabin, Genevieve rested in her seat, sleeping. Practicing one of those old battle mottos, rest when you can.
The only person missing from Sam’s eclectic team of experts was Matthew Sutherland, the master of his salvage vessel, the Maria Helena, who stayed behind to ensure they had a ship to return to in the Caribbean Sea, to the north of Venezuela.
Everyone aboard the chopper would have preferred to see what they knew was spectacular scenery below, but the mission required utmost secrecy. Hence the perilous 3 a.m. flight to the top of one of northern Brazil’s Tepui Mountains, that left them dodging the vast towers.
Three months ago, Billie had been rescued by Sam and his team from the Amazon jungle. She, along with the entire Pirahã tribe, had spent nearly two years enslaved by the Master Builders. She still didn’t quite accept the term enslaved. Instead, she considered it more of an empowerment. A thick, black smoke would come for them along the banks of the Maici River. It would fill them with joy, and wonder, and strength, and then they would be taken somewhere to construct a new temple, in perfect harmony with one another for months at a time.
When a section of the temple was complete, they would all be returned. Although she couldn’t recollect what she had done or where it had taken place, she was always filled with a tremendous sense of achievement. As though she’d taken part in something far greater and more important than her mere life. Of course, she had since learned that the black smoke was a strong hallucinogen that shared similar properties to the drug LSD. The drug tapped into an undeveloped and primitive part of her brain to allow a form of communication similar to telepathy. Only, instead of being told what to do, the entire group of workers would simultaneously act as one entity.
Ever since she’d been rescued, Billie had frequent thoughts, images, and sensations occur in her sleep. Too real to be the dreams of a restless mind, they seemed more like flashbacks. She recalled long hours of physical labor, indigenous people, thick smoke, and the smell of the mysterious hallucinogen used to obtain her cooperation to help build a new temple. Awake, she had no recollection of that temple or the location, but she’d known it was buried deep in her subconscious. In secret, and hardly daring to believe the parlor game could provide a clue, she’d used automatic writing to draw a map.
But all she could come up with was a series of mountains that didn’t match any known locations anywhere near the Maici River. As the days went on the dreams became more vivid, she knew she had to get back. There was something vitally important she had to do, but couldn’t for the life of her remember what it was.
That’s when Sam Reilly contacted her and showed her the image of the four stones found inside the megalithic Death Stone discovered in Göbekli Tepe. The instant she saw the strange Greek letters of Theta, Sigma, Phi, and Omega branded below each of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and she knew where she’d seen the image before. Inside the King’s Chamber of the newly constructed temple.
With the cataclysmic event prophesied by the Death Stone fast approaching, she contacted Elise, who scanned the strange images she’d drawn and uploaded them into a huge database of satellite images. A few minutes later, Elise had shown her the Tepui Mountains, and it had all flooded back to her, as though she were reliving a waking dream.
She breathed heavily at the image in front of them. Even in the dark, she recognized the steep cliff line as the one from her dream – but dreams can be mistaken.
“We’re here. Wherever the hell here is,” Tom said, as he brought the Black Hawk into a hover directly over the coordinates.
They’d all find out soon enough. Night-vision goggles made out tree-tops and tangled vines below. There was no place to land.
Sam said, “I saw a clearing a couple clicks back. See if you can find anything closer. A clearing or even the beach along a stream.”
Tom nodded and flew concentric circles over the edge of the mesa. That side wouldn’t do. About two miles from the edge, an outcrop presented them with a landing spot clear of trees. They’d have to hike.
Leaving Veyron to hold down the fort with a U.S. military grade M134D Gatling gun and no expectation of using it, the others set out on their two-mile hike to the edge of the mesa. Billie’s coordinates were for somewhere 100 feet below.
In addition to their night-vision goggles, each of the five carried military grade respirator masks, personal climbing equipment, and Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns. Each also carried a Ka-Bar knife and various non-lethal weapons according to their expertise.
Sam took the lead on the hike, simply following a handheld GPS, with Billie, Tom and Elise following and Genevieve covering their six. The density of the vegetation required they stay close together. There was no trail, or rather, there were many. Small and large animal trails, tiny rivulets and wider streams all crisscrossed in confusing chaos. For so many, they made surprisingly little noise. Every member of the expedition was trained, proficient with their weapons and in some cases in unarmed combat.
Sam came to an abrupt halt, holding up his hand in a cautionary signal. The others stopped in their tracks.
“We’re here,” he said in a near-whisper. “Billie, now what?”
Billie said, “All right. Follow me.”
A large boulder the size of a small van stood twenty feet back from the edge of the sandstone tabletop. She swept the boulder with the beam of her flashlight. Halfway up, the light reflected something metallic.
There were two large PFH ninety degree climbing bolt plates fixed to the stone. They had been professionally inserted, and designed to hold weights far exceeding the strength of their static abseiling ropes, which were rated to take up to 3600 pounds. The ground between the boulder and the edge of the cliff was well worn, as though hundreds of people had abseiled the spot many times previously.
Three hundred feet of static abseiling ropes were threaded through the bolt hold and secured, while the other ends were dropped over the edge. Two sets of ropes, five people. They would need to take it in turns.
Billie clipped her descender onto the rope, and attached the other end to her carabiner. Sam connected onto the second line, and both cross-checked each other’s equipment.
Sam asked, “Are you ready to return to the temple?”
Billie pulled her night-vision goggles over her eyes and grinned. “I was born ready.”
A moment later, she dropped off the edge of the sandstone cliff-face, and descended into the secret world, far below.
Chapter Two
Billie felt confident as she abseiled quickly down the vertical cliff-face. If there were other climbers out there, they might have thought the expedition had taken a distinctly creepy direction. It resembled a military operation, carried out by Special Forces. But instead, it was privately funded by Sam, who had high standards when it came to people with whom he was prepared to risk his life. The three others who were with them tonight were his top choices from everyone else in the world, Special Forces included.
The black rope ran quickly through her descender.
Two thirds of the way down the rope, Billie locked pressure on the anchor and came to a sudden stop. She glanced at the rope. The blue marker indicated she’d dropped a little less than two hundred feet. She had no idea at what point the entrance was, but felt certain she would simply recognize it when she saw it.
Next to her, Sam stopped, silently.
He leaned out, to get a better view of the entrance, although she doubted very much that he would have spotted it. What appeared to be a single piece of sandstone arenite that ran the full length of the face of the Tepui Mountains, now had a cluster of three smaller fragments – two twenty feet high and one a little under ten.
They were thin. A foot wide at most. A fissure no more than a few inches wide, ran behind the stones and was definitely not big enough for even the smallest in their party to slip through. From the front and the sides, it all looked like one single piece of stone. But it was really three separate pieces, superimposed on one another. In the air, or from any sort of distance, she knew that they became visually inseparable from the rest of the face of the wall, molding together like a mirage.
It was impossible to spot the opening from the air. Even now that she was close to it, Billie wasn’t entirely certain she’d found the opening. The eerie green glow of the cliff face was different in front of her than the way she remembered it, yet still somehow familiar. The identification rock was lighter, almost neon green in the night-vision goggles, where the rest of the cliff face was darker, as if it was in shadow.
The small rock, no larger than her hand and almost perfectly round was impossible to spot by anyone who wasn’t directly upon it. The stone appeared like an innocuous fluke of geometric formations, in an otherwise ordinary piece of geological nature – a round stone among a million vertical ones.
It also appeared as though it were lit by glowing floodlights. Only they weren’t floodlights, they were UV-emitting, fluorescent lichen the Master Builders had placed there to specifically identify the place.
Sam shifted his gaze horizontally along the face of the wall, sea
rching for an opening. He stopped and fixed it on her. “Where’s the entrance?”
She smiled. “You’ll see.”
Billie gently took hold of the round stone in her left hand. Her fingertips could feel the tiny metallic grooves behind the façade of sandstone. They were cold and sharp, like the toothed cogwheel on a bicycle. She increased the pressure, until she was gripping the stone tightly, and then began to turn it clockwise.
It rotated more than a dozen times and then stopped.
Gentle vibrations shook the face of the rock-wall and were followed by the sound of heavy machinery making progress. She imagined the series of intricate mechanisms moving within. The finely-toothed wheels of the sprockets inside, turning multiple roller chains, and multiplying the force of her hand more than a thousand-fold, through a succession of complex gear ratios.
The sound finally ceased, and everything was still once more.
Below her, the two, twenty-foot high by five-foot wide stone fragments had separated. Sliding aside, like an automatic door in any retail store. Directly in the center of the two, was a circular opening. It appeared to be carved by hand using chisels, and was large enough for two persons to walk through standing upright.
Billie turned her gaze toward Sam. “Well?”
He smiled, and said in a voice just above a whisper, “The damned stone doors are on rails!”
Billie released her descender, dropping swiftly another eight feet and swung inside the round, carved tunnel’s entrance. “Exactly.”
Sam followed her down and into the opening. They both unclipped their descenders from the rope. He then radioed the rest of the group to let them know they’d found it and to come down.
His eyes swept the tunnel and the ground in particular. “Are you sure about this, Billie?”
“Yeah. Of course, I am. Why?”
Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. If the floor starts dissolving or rocks start dropping at random, I’m out of here. I’m no Indiana Jones.”
The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 3 Page 53