Carefully, Simone straightened. She couldn't see what it was that had just attempted to dive-bomb her face.
"Simone?" Lincoln said.
"Flies," she said. "Huge ones."
She ran through the index of possible threats in her head that she'd compiled before leaving the old mission. She didn't know of any fly species that grew to such a size. Her mind could have been playing tricks on her, but what had buzzed toward her had to be the size of her thumb, if not larger.
She felt the sweat on her palms and the strength of her heartbeat. All of a sudden, she had a strong urge to climb down the side of the temple ruins and get as far away from the old stone blocks as possible. Whatever had been stirred by the collapse was huge, and appeared angry.
Another loud buzz rocketed toward her ear from behind.
Simone dropped to a crouch, holding on to her boonie hat so it didn't go flying off her head.
Her foot slipped.
Rolling onto her side to avoid falling forward toward the edge, Simone felt the sharp edges of the rocks digging into her back and shoulder as she tumbled sideways.
Jumping back to her feet, Simone took one step before the next buzzing attacker appeared right in front of her.
Swatting the huge flying insect aside, Simone's heart sank as she caught a clear glimpse of the creature as she swung her arm at it.
"Stay back!" she yelled. "Warrior wasps!"
Another came up from a blind spot to her left and landed on her exposed upper arm.
The others stopped only at the sound of Simone's blood-curdling scream echoing across the boulder field.
Stumbling forward in a haze of agony, clutching her left arm, Simone's legs gave out from under her.
"No!" Lincoln shouted as Simone tumbled over the edge of the temple ruins.
Throwing caution to the winds, he picked up his pace, jumping from stone to stone almost at a sprint.
April reached out to grab his arm but he was already on the move. "Wait, Lincoln!"
"We have to go around," Vincent said, pointing in the direction he wished them to go -- a dozen meters away from where Simone had fallen. "Those wasps will take us all down if we go straight."
The team hurried as quickly as they safely could toward the edge of the stone pile.
Lincoln came to a sudden halt at the edge, his boots kicking out small stones from beneath him. They tumbled down the side of the collapsed ruin, down to where Simone lay writhing in pain.
He wasted no time getting down, climbing to a point where he deemed himself close enough to the ground, and jumping the rest of the way.
Landing on his feet and falling into a forward roll, he scrambled over to Simone and dragged her away from the base of the old temple, away from where any more warrior wasps might attack.
He dragged her into the shade, but Simone would not lie still. Her teeth clenched, veins bulging in her neck, blood dripping from numerous abrasions from her fall, she cried out in a pain that seemed impossible to lessen.
The others hurried over, gathering around with the same shocked expression shared among them.
"What the bloody hell," Warren asked as he watched Simone convulsing on the ground.
Vincent looked at him. "Morphine."
Warren searched his bag until he found the morphine and handed it to Vincent.
"Hold still just a moment," he said more to himself than to Simone, who was in a state of pain so extreme that she likely couldn't comprehend his words in the first place.
He administered the dose, but Simone still writhed uncontrollably, the muscles of her upper arm twitching violently as if she were possessed.
Iris covered her mouth with her hand. "Is she...is she going to live?"
Lincoln turned a concerned look toward Vincent, desperate to know the answer.
"Warrior wasp," he said. "The worst sting of any insect on the planet."
Warren, gripping his assault rifle, took a deliberate step away from the old temple ruin.
Vincent continued, "There's nothing we can do except wait it out."
"How long?" Lincoln asked.
"A while," Vincent said. "An hour or more."
Lincoln jumped to his feet. "An hour! We can't just leave her like this for an hour. She needs medical help!"
"From where?" April asked. "Nobody's here except us."
"We can give her the maximum dose of morphine, but I'm afraid that's about all we can do for her," Vincent said. "The venom needs to run its course."
Lincoln roamed in an aimless circle, hands rubbing his face. He clearly did not want to leave Simone the way she was. Her hysterical shrieking of pure, brilliant agony had lessened, likely from sheer exhaustion more than the morphine dose.
Iris held her hands over her ears, troubled by the disturbing sounds of rippling torment racking Simone's entire body.
April glanced between Lincoln and Vincent. "What do we do now?"
Lincoln turned to meet April's gaze. He considered their options silently. They could wait for Simone to be well enough to proceed. They could split the party – he would stay with Simone and the others could find their way further up the mountain to where the meteor was suspected to lie. They could attempt to carry her, but in her current state, he knew that wasn't the best idea.
His train of though was interrupted by a continuous, growing sound not native to the jungle.
He raised an apprehensive look up toward the jungle canopy above.
"Is that what I think it is?" April asked.
Vincent stepped around, eyes cast upward, trying to find a gap in the thick canopy of leaves to see if his suspicion was confirmed.
The shadow of a great steel beast flashed overhead, giant rotors cutting through the air in a deafening roar.
Vincent cursed. He turned back to the others. "That was a bloody chopper."
12.
Chachapoyas, Amazonas, Peru
Waves of intense, burning pain coursed through Simone's body, seemingly in sync with her heartbeat.
Each pulsating ripple seized her body, tensing muscles and locking joints. Even with her eyes shut tight, she could see nothing but brilliant white. All sense of direction was gone.
She pawed at the dirt where she lay, squeezing fistfuls of earth in a futile effort to subdue the unbearable sting of the warrior wasp.
Her senses ravaged, she could just barely make out a conversation happening above her. She thought she heard the word "helicopter" repeated several times in tones of disbelief, but that made no sense. The party was alone and no one else knew what treasure they were after.
A dull throbbing in her ears slowly subsided. Whether it was a real helicopter flying above or an effect of her body attempting to fight off the venomous sting, she couldn't say for certain. But her hearing began to clear soon after.
"We can't just leave her," Lincoln's voice said in an ethereal, dreamlike haze. It was as if he was speaking from a great distance away.
"We can't let anyone else get to the meteor fragment, either." That voice was April's.
"How can we be sure they're after the fragment?" Lincoln said in a voice that sounded closer than before. "The odds of that are – "
"Odds don't matter," Vincent said. "If they're up there, they can find it, whether they are looking for it or not. We mustn't hesitate any longer."
"I'm not leaving Simone," Lincoln said.
Simone heard his voice loud and clear, her hearing back to 80% of normal. A fuzzy sound persisted, but in the background. She tried to lift her eyelids but her body was having none of it.
She squirmed blindly in the dirt, trying as desperately as she could to push herself to her feet. She didn't even know where her feet were or where the ground was in relation to them. The rippling waves of electric fire running through her veins did not relent. All she could do is wait it out.
Speaking through clenched teeth, Simone choked out a dry "Go."
She felt someone kneeling beside her. Lincoln. "Simone..."
"Go," she repeated, drooling in the dirt and still grasping for something to hold on to, praying it would end the torment.
A hand slipped into her own. She tightened her fingers around it, feeling Lincoln's grasp.
"We'll be back," he said.
A small comfort bloomed inside Simone, if only brief and fleeting.
Their hands parted, and he was gone.
Simone listened to their boots tracking away in haste, further up the mountain toward the suspected site of the meteor fragment's impact.
Clenching the dirt and writhing in an agony that refused to cease, Simone wondered how one little insect could inflict so much crippling excruciation. She could only describe it as unrelenting torture. She would rather drown again, over and over and over again. Death would be preferable to enduring the affliction caused by the warrior wasp.
Death was an embrace, one which few approached with enthusiasm, but an embrace nevertheless. Its own kind of comfort.
There was no comfort in the warrior wasp's sting.
It was pure hell on Earth.
_____
Lincoln raced up the path after the four others, his mind lingering on Simone instead of the unexpected guests circling the mountaintop in a helicopter he identified as an IAR 330 Puma. Outdated by modern standards, but nonetheless effective. And not in use by the United States military.
All thoughts in his head came to a sudden stop as he rounded a bend in the path and halted dead in his tracks. The sudden realization that they were not near the summit of the mountain dawned as clear as a new day when he saw the view before him.
The party stood on a shelf cut into the side of the mountain by weather and time. An enormous waterfall cascaded down from above, and continued down below -- a double-decker waterfall, and they stood on a shelf in the center of it.
It had to be over seven hundred and fifty meters from top to bottom by his best guess. The roaring of the chopper blades drowned out the sound of the falls.
It was all so loud, he could hardly keep his head straight. It appeared that Vincent and Warren were in disagreement, and he could have sworn he heard Vincent say "That was not part of the agreement" with an arm outstretched toward the circling chopper.
Lincoln drew closer to the argument, and words became clearer.
"They were a contingency only!" Vincent shouted in Warren's face, spittle flying.
Lincoln stepped up to the two. "What's going on? Who's in that chopper?"
Warren stepped back, and kept stepping back. "Backup."
Lincoln didn't understand the command at first. Then it became clear that it was not a command, but a statement. Backup. Reinforcements. Additional parties he had not been made aware of, yet the British seemed to know were involved.
He took one step toward Warren to shorten the distance, so they didn't have to scream over the competing sounds of the helicopter and the waterfall. But as he advanced, Warren withdrew.
Lincoln took another step, hands open in peace. Warren stopped, and his right hand came from behind his back, now wielding a handgun aimed at Lincoln.
"What the..." Lincoln said in disbelief, stunned more than scared. His shock overwhelmed the sense of betrayal, and another step toward Warren in a last ditch effort to make peace was the last step he would take.
Lincoln froze in place as Warren swung his arm to the side, aiming the gun at April's head.
Lincoln's heartbeat quickened. "Okay," he said. "Let's think before we act any further."
Vincent stormed toward the man, red-faced and infuriated. "What in the bloody hell are you doing! Put the gun away, damn you! This is mad!"
Warren yanked April in front of him with his free hand and turned a smirk toward his British superior. "Contingency plan."
Vincent made a sudden move for the gun in Warren's hand, but the big man moved quickly for his size and dodged the attempt. Warren pressed the barrel of the firearm deep into the red curls of April's hair, resting the cold metal against her skull.
"Stop me and I stop her," he said loud enough to be heard by all. "This has already been decided."
Vincent blinked rapidly, as if the vision before him was the product of some fever dream.
From the corner of Lincoln's eye, he spotted Iris wading into the stream of the waterfall that bisected the shelf and connected the upper and lower falls. Her eyes were cast down into the water, searching. She paid no attention to the developing hostage situation with Warren and the others.
The helicopter made another circle. Lincoln thought it seemed to be surveying the area rather than looking for a spot to land. He could see no insignia branded on the steel beast, nor did he know who was inside. Or how many people it might be carrying. All he knew was that he was grossly outnumbered.
His thoughts raced with ideas of how to warn Simone should she pick herself up and make the rest of the mountain climb. Instinct told him she would. Nothing could keep Simone Cassidy down for long.
As these ideas swarmed in his head, he spotted Vincent moving toward the spot in the water where Iris was preoccupied.
"What are you doing?" he asked in a tone that evoked more anger than curiosity.
With both hands in the water, Iris reached further down and lifted a shiny black stone the size of a basketball out of the stream.
His gaze fixed on the dripping object in Iris's hands, Lincoln felt his heart sink into his stomach.
The meteor fragment.
"Help me with this," Iris shouted to Vincent as she strained to lift the object from where it had become wedged between two large rocks.
The two carried the fragment over to where Warren stood, April still held close in his grasp and his gun still pressed firmly to her head. She did not struggle.
Lincoln watched the whole thing, praying that April didn't lash out and attempt to break free. Warren was too much of a loose cannon, and he would shoot her without thinking twice. It seemed that April, too, understood this.
Both Iris and Vincent struggled under the weight of the shiny dark meteor fragment. To Lincoln's eyes, it didn’t look as if it should be that heavy, surely able to be lifted by one individual, never mind two. The duo wrestled to move the unexpectedly weighty fragment out of the rushing water of the twin falls. Slowly. Carefully. Stumbling. Nearly losing it in the water.
Lincoln wrestled with his own weight -- whether or not he should help the team that had betrayed his trust, his leadership. He wanted to see the fragment come safely out of the current, away from the potential of losing it to the lower section of the falls. It seemed a better prospect to protect the rare and dangerous material and attempt to recover it from the British later than possibly lose it, only for it to end up in the hands of whoever was lucky enough to eventually recover it.
As the wheels spun in his mind, the helicopter drew back around, coming in closer with its side door sliding open.
Lincoln backpedaled as the high winds of the chopper's blades threw the area into chaos. He instinctively drew away from the edge, bracing himself as best he could.
A rope uncoiled from the hovering monster aircraft, and one by one, heavily armed mercenaries came down until there were half a dozen in full tactical combat gear encircling the others, assault weapons drawn.
The uniformity and precision of the tactical unit had Lincoln half expecting the late Heather Severn to follow the unit down from the chopper, but it was another ghost of the past that joined the crew on the mountainside shelf.
Solomon's boots touched down and the helicopter withdrew, making another wide, continuous circle around the falls.
He approached Lincoln.
"Our paths cross again, Mr. Lewis."
Lincoln spat on the ground, turning his head toward Vincent and Iris. "I expected better of you."
"As did I," Vincent said as he strained with Iris to lift the fragment out of the rushing water. He turned his anger toward Solomon. "This was not our agreement."
Solomon did not even look over his shoulder to acknowledge the man.
He spoke to the ground at Lincoln's feet instead. "The agreement was that we assist you in acquiring the meteor fragment before it fell into the hands of this man and his team."
Only then did he raise his eyes to meet Lincoln's.
"And it appears that you are short one team member," he said to Lincoln.
"Not quite." The voice came from the path behind Lincoln.
All heads turned to find Simone Cassidy staggering toward the spot where Lincoln and Solomon stood.
Warren tightened his grip on April's arm.
Simone gripped her own arm at the spot where she had been stung by the warrior wasp, still visibly suffering. She thought about what to say to the man who still had her parents’ journal.
She didn't have the chance to say anything.
Carrying the meteor fragment with Vincent, Iris slipped, stumbled, lost her grip, and fell.
The weight was too much for Vincent, and the fragment escaped his grasp, dropping into the water and bobbing in the current, rushing straight for the lower waterfall.
Solomon pointed to his mercenary team and shouted, "Grab that!"
But they were too far away. Only he, Lincoln, and Simone were within range to stop it from spilling over the side of the mountain.
Before anyone else could act, Simone was already running toward the floating fragment, legs still weak but pumping hard nonetheless.
Mind overcame matter and she jumped into the water, corralling the fragment in her arms and trying with all her might to lift it toward the bank of the stream.
"Simone, look out!"
Someone shouted, but she couldn't see who. All she saw was the frothing white water rushing all around her, and the edge of the lower waterfall coming up faster than she had imagined.
13.
Gocta Cataracts, Amazonas, Peru
All voices hushed and stillness fell over the whole group.
Lincoln stared, mouth agape, watching the stream from the upper fall cascade over the lower fall, disappearing down into the clouds just as Simone and the meteor fragment had done moments before.
Solomon was the first to move, waving for the chopper to circle back. He then motioned to his team of mercenaries to corral the British team and lead them over to the spot on the shelf where the chopper would pick them up.
Buried in the Sky Page 8