by Rob Jones
Amy nodded. “A lot of phone calls.”
Fidel swallowed a mouthful of beans and drank some water. “It’s true. The authorities usually require a lot of notice and personal details for this park. Licence plates of all vehicles coming in, names of everyone and passport details, plus the exact length of time you’re planning on spending in the park.”
“Wow,” Quinn said. “Sounds like they have something to hide in here. What’s the betting they know about the pyramids we’re trying to find?”
“I think it’s more likely they’re trying to protect the environment, schmuckle,” Lewis said.
“Ben’s right,” Fidel said. “They have a lot of problems with pollution here like pesticides from the local cotton fields. During the rainy season there are large deaths of fish and birds in the park’s Jocotal Lake. They don’t want endless numbers of tourists coming in and ruining the place even more.”
Blanco said, “But I think Max is trying to say that this McCabe must have some pretty high-level contacts, right?”
Hunter nodded. “Yes, but I know him and I can’t think of anyone he would know in the El Salvadorian parks department. I mean, he might have a connection, but it just seems weird.”
Jodie changed the subject and set her bowl down. “You know what, Sal?”
The man from Brooklyn smiled. “That was the best thing you ever ate?”
“Oh no,” she said. “It tasted like shit, but I was going to say this place could be quite romantic.”
“Thanks, Jojo,” he said. “You really think this place is romantic?”
“Sure,” Quinn said. “Except for the flies and mosquito bites and humidity and sweat and headaches and getting shot at.”
“He wasn’t asking you, Morticia.”
They heard something rustling in the undergrowth. Hunter pulled his knife and leapt to his feet ready for anything. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Just an animal.”
Blanco followed the creature’s path as it vanished back into the jungle. “It’s an agouti,” he said. “Along with Macaws, it’s the only thing on earth that can open a Brazil nut without a tool.”
“Whoa, Salvatore,” Amy said. “That’s enough Discovery Channel already.”
He gave the gruff but honest laugh Hunter was already starting to warm to. “You got it, and remember it’s Sal, unless you want me to tell our new friend what Amy stands for?”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
He shrugged. “Try me.”
“Leave it, Sal.”
“I thought Amy stood for Amy?” Hunter said, grinning.
“You’d think,” Jodie said. “But you’d be wrong.”
“Can we move on, please?” Amy said.
Another grizzly laugh. “Anything you say.”
The fire crackled and popped. Embers floated up into the darkness and then higher into the silvery moonlit canopy. The threat of McCabe and his men was real, but as the night grew older they started to feel sleepy and more relaxed.
Jodie’s voice broke the silence. This time, she sounded less cynical than usual. “You really think Atlantis was a real place?”
Hunter’s reply was instant. “No doubt in my heart. I’ve spent most of my life studying it and what started out as a fascinating myth in my childhood gradually turned into something I’m convinced is out there.”
“But what would it mean?” she asked. “I mean, if it’s real.”
The others sat in silence, waiting for Hunter’s response. When it came, it shocked them all.
“It would mean the end of everything humanity knows. Right now, we think we know everything about our pasts and where we come from. About where our civilizations started and how they began. The second I find Atlantis, all of that changes forever. The foundations of humanity are rocked to the core.”
“How so?”
He lifted his eyes from the fire and fixed them on her. “Are you kidding? If we find Atlantis, not only do we find evidence of a totally new civilization stretching back thousands of years older than anything we currently know, but we also find out we’re not anywhere near as clever as we think we are. How the hell do we get to the age of satellites and not know every inch of our own planet?”
“I guess.”
“After Atlantis, everything changes,” he went on. “If it’s older than Sumer, we have to rewrite the story of human history. And we have to ask just how the hell did such a civilization ever end?”
She shivered. “You’re starting to freak me out.”
“Me too,” Quinn said. “I’m hitting the hay. If my life’s like one percent in danger, then wake me up. No wait – half a percent.”
Lewis laughed. “Not sixty-forty?”
“You heard me, Marine. You can do probabilities right?”
“Not really,” he said. “I’m a historian.”
Jodie looked at her watch. “It’s late. I’m turning in.”
“Jodie’s right,” Amy said. “It’s late and we have a long hike in the morning if we’re going to reach Scorpion Ravine. We need to get some sleep.”
“We need a night watch,” Hunter said. “I’ll go first and we’ll change every two hours.”
Now Amy checked her watch. “I’ll do midnight till two.”
“I’ll sit with you,” said Fidel.
“I’ll do two till four,” Blanco said. “I’m usually playing poker at that hour anyway.”
“Then it looks like I’m four till six,” Lewis said. “Former Marine here, guys. No stranger to night watches.”
Jodie went to throw some water on the fire but Blanco stopped her. “Keep it going. Not only do you need your water, but the smoke will keep the mosquitos away.”
“Won’t it help this McCabe dude find us?”
“He’d have to be almost right on top of us to see it,” Hunter said, his voice trailing away as he stared into the fire. “Get some sleep. It’s okay. We rise at daybreak and go to the ravine. If there really is a lost city hidden away there, our lives are about to change in a big way.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The dawn was cold. Hunter splashed his face with water and rearranged his pack ready for the day’s hike to the ravine. They had made it through the night without McCabe attacking them, but that only made him think his old enemy had beaten him to the lost city. He drank some water and made his pack comfortable on his back. When everyone else was ready, they broke camp and headed through the jungle with the sun at their backs.
Within minutes, the day heated up. Amy’s feet were slipping around inside her boots and her socks and shirt were slick with sweat. The heat and humidity worked together to crush her spirits and the winding jungle path seemed never to end. For the first time since the mission started, she wondered if she was doing the right thing.
She felt the straps of her pack cutting into her shoulder and hoisted it up higher to get it into a more comfortable position. It wasn’t heavy – like most of the others she was only carrying water, some energy bars, a few cans of insect repellent and her gun and some spare ammo – but the heat had sapped her strength. It was beginning to feel like someone had sneaked a ten pound dumbbell inside it.
They stopped for a quick lunch and some more water and then resumed their hike through the undergrowth. There were no trails here, no paths or tracks. Just thick tropical jungle requiring endless hacking with their machetes. By the time they reached the ravine, they were all exhausted.
“I need a long rest,” Quinn said.
“But you’re not going to get one,” Hunter said. He was pointing to a cave in the cliffs at the bottom of the ravine’s north side. McCabe’s truck was parked up in a clearing and night had brought a new development: two heavy-duty black hawk helicopters were sitting in a clearing in the sunshine, their blades still whirring slowly. Positioned outside one of them in the clearing was a black metal chest. “He’s called in back-up after yesterday’s skirmish, but by the looks of it they haven’t been here long. How the hell did they get permission to bring
those choppers into the park?”
“I doubt they got permission, Max,” Amy said.
Fidel waved a mosquito away. “They would never get permission. They are here illegally.”
“And what’s in the chest?” Jodie asked.
“Beats me,” shrugged Hunter. “Who are those guys with him?”
Amy and Blanco exchanged a quick glance. Amy said, “They’re heavily armed and they have two choppers. That’s all that matters right now.”
“No, it’s not,” Hunter said. “What also matters is that I was right – they’re not looking in the right place! McCabe is making the same mistake as the Nazis!”
“Are you sure?” Amy looked at him with hope in her eyes.
“Sure I’m sure. Did I not tell you that I’m twice the archaeologist that he is?”
She fixed him in the eye with a look of mock-admiration on her face. “You did, yes. In fact, you’re like a god to us.”
“Thanks, but make it four times the archaeologist. McCabe is doing just what I thought he would and trying to enter the ravine in the south. We have an advantage.”
“So where should we go now?” Lewis asked.
“Farther to the north,” Hunter said, pointing away from the McCabe crew. “Down there in that gulley is my best guess.”
“Then let’s get on with it,” Amy said, adjusting her pack. “It won’t take them long to work out their mistake and there are just too many of them to fight.”
Hunter pointed at the choppers and grinned. “At least we found a way out of here.”
“We sure did,” Blanco said. “But getting to them might be a problem – they’re being watched by a couple of armed guards.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Hunter said. “For now, let’s just see if we can get inside the ravine and find the lost city before they do.”
They moved away from McCabe and followed the gradient down to the bottom of the north end of the ravine. Still no tracks, and the work was heavy and draining. Machetes swung and hands grabbed at fistfuls of undergrowth as they cleared a path to the gulley at the base of Scorpion Ravine.
Hunter pulled the printed photo of the map from his pocket and took another look at it. “This is it. This has to be it. That’s the overhang drawn here – see how it looks like a Scorpion’s claw?”
“Not really,” Quinn said. “And by the way, I want to go back to my apartment.”
“Noted,” Amy said. “Max?”
He smiled. “This must be the entrance, Amy. See the split in the rock?” He moved closer, clearing vines and weeds as he went until he found what looked like the entrance to a chambered long barrow. Two stone posts stood either side of a narrow entrance blocked by a roughly hewn boulder. Balanced on top of the posts, a heavy capstone was wedging the boulder in place. Above the boulder, a slim fissure widened just enough for him to angle a flashlight beam down into it and see what was inside.
“Some sort of tunnel,” he said.
Fidel climbed up beside him, and said in awe, “I have never seen anything like this before in my entire life!”
“That boulder looks pretty chunky,” Lewis said.
“We can move it if we work together,” said Hunter. “If Sal and I can lift the capstone, Ben and Jodie should be able to roll out the boulder blocking the entrance.”
“Feeling strong?” Lewis asked Jodie.
“Always.”
Hunter and Blanco hefted the capstone up an inch giving Lewis and Jodie enough room to crawl underneath and heave the boulder forward. They rolled it away from the entrance and overturned it, collapsing down into the undergrowth when they had finished. The effort of moving the heavy boulder had made the Californian girl lightheaded. “That was heavier than your music collection, Quinn.”
“Bite me, Barbie.”
“Hey!”
“But we’re in,” Amy said, raising her voice. “That’s the main thing.”
Lewis clapped his hands together. “Just cannot wait to investigate these caverns. I’m taking a selfie for Meg.”
Hunter and Blanco lowered the capstone back down with a couple of loud grunts and a puff of light dust. The Londoner gave the top of the flat rock a loving tap. Peering down underneath it and seeing the hole Lewis and Jodie had created by moving the rock, he gave a toothy grin to the rest of the team. “I’m going first. No arguments.”
He threw his bag down and climbed in after it, descending the sloped shaft feet first. At the bottom he swept his flashlight around his new home and saw he was standing in a small entrance chamber flanked by two smaller transept chambers. At the end of the entrance chamber, three archways gave way to dark tunnels. Each one was marked with a symbol set into its keystone.
Calling up to the rest of the team, he told them the coast was clear and they followed him down. Amy was first, making her way down the slope like a child on a playground slide until she landed at the bottom next to Hunter.
“Having fun?” he asked.
She got to her feet and dusted off her backside. “If I were, I’d never let anyone know.”
The rest of the team arrived. “Which tunnel do we go down?” Jodie asked.
“This one.” Hunter angled his flashlight beam over to the central archway and illuminated the keystone. They all stared up at the carving, shocked.
“Wait, is that a bas-relief bear?” Lewis asked.
“It’s high-relief,” Hunter said. “And it’s a polar bear.”
Amy gasped and leaned in closer, standing on tiptoes to get closer to the keystone. “My God, it really is a polar bear. How old is this carving, Max?”
“Thousands of years old.”
“But how is that possible?’ she asked.
“It’s insane,” said Fidel.
“Yeah,” Jodie said. “Exactly how could anyone in El Salvador, thousands of years ago, know what a polar bear looked like?”
“Maybe they traveled,” Blanco said, but the tone of his voice told everyone he didn’t believe his own theory.
“If they traveled to the Arctic, then they came home through Africa,” Lewis said, shining his flashlight beam at the keystone on the right-hand tunnel. “Because if that isn’t an elephant, I’ll hand my PhD back into Yale.”
“This is freaking me out,” Jodie said. “There are no damn polar bears or elephants in El Salvador, right?”
“No,” Hunter said. “And neither have there ever been.”
Quinn’s voice stabbed the tension. “If a polar bear and an elephant are freaking you out, wait till you see what’s on the keystone over here on the left.”
They turned and saw what looked like a Chinese dragon twisting in flight and breathing fire.
Jodie took a step back. “Okay, did we just walk into the damn Twilight Zone?”
“No,” Hunter said darkly. “But we need to get a move on. Don’t forget about McCabe.”
“Wait, you said we should follow the central tunnel,” Quinn said. “What’s so special about the polar bear?”
“We’re not interested in the polar bear,” Hunter said. “These animals were probably objects of worship, but they’re not significant. If you look either side of the capstone you’ll see some other glyphs carved into the rock. The ones beside the dragon indicate some sort of armory and the ones next to the elephant suggest something like an infirmary.”
“And the polar bear?”
“I’m coming to that. If we want to find the main city then we should follow the polar bear, because that’s what the symbols indicate. We’re looking for something like a place of worship with an altar or something like that. That’s where we’re going to find the third winged statue.”
Quinn nodded. “I’m not going to argue with that.”
Outside the chamber they heard the sound of men trampling through the jungle and arguing in English and Spanish.
“Damn it,” Hunter said. “McCabe finally found the right place to look.”
“And he’d have found the trail we made to
o,” Blanco said. “So he already knows we’re here.”
“Let’s get going,” Hunter said. “With some luck, it’ll take him a long time to decipher the symbols in the keystones. Make sure to cover your tracks as we head down into the tunnel.”
Hunter led the way, jogging down the tunnel with his flashlight sweeping over the ground ahead of him as he searched for traps. Behind them, they heard the sound of McCabe’s voice. He was calling out to them in the darkness, goading them to break their cover and return to him.
“Stay quiet everyone,” Hunter said. “He’s trying to get us to reveal what tunnel to use.”
“I say let him work it out for himself,” said Lewis.
Hunter gave him a sideways glance as they walked through the darkness. “Plus, if we go back there he’ll probably kill us all.”
“There’s that, too.”
“Yup.”
They set off once again, making their way down a shallow gradient and always aware they were going deeper underground. Another half hour passed as they followed the twisting, turning tunnel taking them deeper inside the earth.
Then Blanco’s deep voice broke the silence. “Wait, what the hell is that up ahead?”
“What do you see, Sal?” Amy asked, her voice echoing in the tunnel.
“My God,” he said. “It’s a damn pyramid, just like you said, Max.”
Hunter stepped ahead of the group and turned his flashlight beam up into a vast cavernous space. They had thought they were deep underground, but instead, the cavern’s roof was a seething mass of vines and roots. “We found it,” he said quietly. “And it looks like we’re not underground anymore, but in another ravine.”
“One completely covered over with plants,” Amy said shocked.
Blanco looked at them with awe on his face. “And did I mention the giant pyramid?”
“Yeah,” Amy said. “Let’s go take a look at that, right Max?”
But Hunter was already walking forward, mesmerized by the lost city in front of him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The rest of the team stepped toward him until they were standing on a ledge covered in rubble and debris. Hunter swept his flashlight beam across the ground at their feet. “Look out for the loose stones. They’re probably caused by the earthquakes.”