"I'm not a killer—"
"What are you?"
"It doesn't matter what I am or not. What matters is, we all have a purpose. And we will fulfill it before we go."
José stared at the strange man a moment more. He resented his mind that he trusted the man so quickly. Finally, Detective José Hanna told Andrew Gilmore to lead, and he would follow.
They went down to the police station in a truck that Gilmore had already provided. José admired the man's resourcefulness. He seemed to have thought of everything. It occurred to him that this man knew the detective would play along.
He shook his head in wonder.
Minutes after, they were driving through an alley on the edge of the town, not far from the trail that went uphill. José asked Gilmore who owned the apartment he took them up to. The man murmured something he didn't catch.
Rodriguez drank water that Gilmore gave him like a camel. Tami Capaldi would not touch anything. And José noticed how the woman averted her gaze every time Gilmore looked at her.
"You two know each other?" he asked Gilmore.
"It's not important," Andrew said and looked at old Roddy. "You know the Gerentes. You can help us."
Rodriguez cast fearful eyes on the detective who nodded his approval.
"Yes, I do. What do you want to know?"
"Can you come to the temple?"
Jose said, "No, that was not the arrangement."
Andrew said severely, "The arrangement is to get the gold. This is how we get it."
He went back to Rodriguez.
"We are going to the Inca temple. You are going to help us find the vault where the gold is—"
"But I have never been inside it. I don't know how."
Andrew smiled at him. "You will know when you see the place."
"What about me?" Tami Capaldi asked.
Andrew took a moment to think. Tami was as crucial to the expedition as the rest of them, but only if she is present there. If things got rough and she is captured, she becomes a bargaining chip for Pietro, or the CIA agent or whoever.
"You will sit this one out, Tami."
The woman averted her eyes again. Andrew went to her, where she sat in the only good chair in the room. Behind her, on the wall, the clock ticked. He took her hand and squeezed gently. He looked in her big dark eyes. In a low tone that only Tami could hear as he would in a confessional, Andrew said:
"What was done is done. I do not judge you. The team is not judging you. You have been through a lot of troubles. This time we need to protect you properly. You will hide here and wait. I will come for you when the job is done, alright?"
This time she did not look away. This time, she smiled too. It was not joyful, but it was genuine in the solace of a former priest. She bobbed her head and giggled.
Andrew let her hand go.
Behind them, Detective José Hanna seethed.
—
Andrew had told Olivia to keep her line open, so when he called her cellphone again, he answered on the first short ring.
"I'm on my way with the best map you can find."
"Make it quick. We are losing light and power," Olivia said.
Andrew looked at José.
"They need more batteries, food, and equipment."
Detective José Hanna said they'd have to go back to Cusco to get the supplies. Andrew looked across the empty road and silently lit homes, the dust-laden walls, the mischievous breeze that never stopped blowing here. Going back was a must, but it was precarious too.
"Let's do it," he said.
—
A roadblock was waiting for them at the town's entrance. Two pickup trucks with thugs bearing AKs rode up the street. Pietro was sitting on the hood of one of them, hands crossed on his chest, and a glowering stare on his face.
Andrew hadn't expected this; Pietro was learning a strategy and keeping calm. That was bad for everyone else's strategy. Andrew called from the cab of the van, "What's going on, Oscar!?"
Rodriguez was shaking beside him. His hands wrung together in his lap. Detective José Hanna remained quiet on the other end.
Pietro jumped off the hood and sauntered towards the van.
He was squinting at the van. He pointed at Rodriguez and stared between Andrew and José.
"Where are you taking him?" he asked.
"He is a free citizen of Peru and can go wherever he wants to. You can't stop him. Now let us through."
"And you? Are you a free citizen of Peru? Do you have the right to take him away? That's kidnapping, a criminal offense. Detective José Hanna knows that, doesn't he?"
Andrew stuck his head out of the window. "Taking him away is better than what you'd do to him, Oscar."
Pietro turned around, strutted like a lawyer. He looked at his thugs and screamed, "Why does everyone think I'm a bad person, huh?!"
"That's because you are terrible," Andrew replied. "Now let us through!"
"Or what? Huh? What will you do?"
Pietro was breathing hard. Then he did something strange. He waved at the roadblock. One of the pickups’ engines woke up. It turned around and parked in front of the other one so that there was enough room for the van to pass.
"Go on," Pietro said.
"It's a trap," José whispered. "You can't trust him."
Andrew moved the van slowly. When he stopped beside Pietro Oscar, he asked him, "I suppose you'd want something in return?"
The anger in his eyes had disappeared. Pietro sighed deeply. He looked away and then back.
"I lost a lot of good boys already. It will be foolish of me to continue with the same method. I'm going to let you go on if you give me fifty percent of the gold—"
"Twenty."
"Forty."
"Twenty-five."
The old anger flared in Pietro's eyes. "Thirty."
"Deal."
Detective José grabbed Andrew's arm across the cab. "What are you doing?!"
Andrew whispered, "Give and take, that's what I'm doing! There's no other way out of this shit!"
Pietro walked away. He twirled his finger in the air. The pickups moved off the road, and Andrew drove on.
He said to the road, "It is on now."
—
9
Cusco, Peru.
Two CH-47 Chinooks landed in a clearing outside of Cusco at night. A total of twenty special forces men lined out of it with heavy assault gears. A black van from the American embassy took them away towards Apachia, where they met agent Seth Kowalski. He would be leading the assault on the Inca temple.
"This isn't a rescue mission. It is a recovery mission," the short man announced. "And extraction of a US citizen goes by the name of Patrick Coleman, Professor of Archeology, University of Florida. We have reason to believe he's dead. But his body must be recovered, along with everything of value that he found."
Kowalski gazed from one American face to the other. Some of the world's best fighting men were standing before him, trained in infiltration, combat, and stealth. For the first time since he came to Peru, he felt his purpose get on track.
"I'll decide what's of value, alright? We are going against locals—small armed militia outfits with AKs and bad language— shoot to kill if you have to. As we speak, four American citizens are in that temple, illegally. We'll arrest them, and if they resist, we'll shoot them. They're armed, by the way."
Next, he called the man in charge of this operation.
"Plans changed," he said. "We are busting in. We lost the old man, the map. We are taking over the temple at 2100 hours."
"You have clearance. I want the journalist alive."
"Say again?"
"The journalist, Olivia Newton. We need her alive."
Kowalski bit down on the question, why?
The agency can do whatever they want with Olivia Newton.
"It may get heavy in there. I can't promise you that—"
"Don't fuck around, Seth!"
"Yes, boss."
Agent Seth Kowalski smiled wic
kedly.
—
The team was down to one lamp. Two more blinked off about two hours ago with the finality of a dying heart. Liam Murphy had taken one them and the Reno the other one. Both men cradled the lamps like babies that needed suckling. She watched the lamps flick off nonetheless, with some hope.
When her phone started ringing about what seemed like hours later, she jumped in triumph.
Tom Garcia's voice sprang into the black air from hundreds of miles away.
"Hey, lady."
She closed her eyes and exhaled disappointment. "Tom, hi."
"Hey, are you relieved I called or what? What's going on out there?"
Olivia did her best to speak through her anxiety. They talked about Peru and food. Betty was visiting her sister Sally, and husband, Preston. Tom expected her back next week if Sally lets her go, that is.
Olivia heard a buzz and looked at the screen of the cellphone. It was a call from Andrew.
"Tom, I gotta go."
"Olivia—"
"Bye."
She punched the red button, then the green one.
"Olivia, we are on our way. Can you hear me loud and clear?"
"Yes, Andrew."
"Good, keep your phone up, I'll be tracking you."
Olivia turned to the single lamp. Her team was sitting around it.
"Andrew is here."
—
First, the team walked back through the first two doors. The bodies of Pietro's boys had long gone past rigor mortis; Anabia stepped on thick, clotted blood. He jumped, stamped his feet to get it off.
"You are covered with the blood of the innocent," Liam joked.
"Fuck you, Liam!"
Olivia suggested they broke the team. She would go on with Lawrence Diggs. The rest would wait.
She called Andrew to tell him she'd be coming out with Diggs. Andrew said the signal would be two taps from the torchlight, a breath, followed by three taps, a breath, then two taps. Frank Miller held her hand. "Be careful."
"I will."
"Godspeed, Olivia."
Olivia and Diggs went off with the only lamp while the others waited in the dark.
—
It was not to be as Andrew Gilmore had planned it.
Lawrence Diggs took the lead. He was going up the rubble that acted like steps, out of the hole, when he saw the three figures crouching up there. He knew instantly who they were by their gear. He whipped out his gun but stopped himself when the figures suddenly drew away.
Two smoke canisters were shot into the hole. Diggs pulled Olivia's hand.
He hissed, "Go! Go! Go!"
Diggs went the opposite way they had come, and Olivia followed him. He switched the lamp off as white smoke started feeling up the corridor.
"That's not Pietro's people," said Olivia.
The white smoke crept towards them. "Come on, let's get far away from here. Diggs took the comms control in his pocket and switched the radios on. It was risky, but the risk of losing the team was even higher.
"Frank, be on the alert, be on the alert! Special forces just infiltrated. Say again, special forces are here."
Olivia grabbed the man's hand in the dark. "What do you mean, 'special forces'?"
"Keep your voice down," Diggs whispered. "We have to keep moving. Put your hand on the wall. Stay with me."
Olivia heard more canisters drop on the floor behind them. The fizz of the gas and the rippling sound of ropes as the men descended through the hole. She hadn't gotten a look at them, but she was sure those were professionals. The gas canisters and methods were too sophisticated for Pietro Oscar to muster.
Something is not right. Olivia's earphones cackled; Frank Miller's voice came in.
"We have secured ourselves as best we could."
Diggs's voice said, "Stay in the shadows."
"Is Olivia fine?"
"She's alright."
When they had walked about twenty meters, Diggs stopped. He asked Olivia to get her gun ready. Olivia set the lamp down and checked her gun that it was loaded; it sounded so. She crouched beside Diggs and waited for the approaching footsteps.
At least seven men had come searching for the two. They had seen the glare of the lamp long before Olivia and Diggs got to the hole. The tactical team split in two. Most went the other way, and the rest came after the two with the lamp.
Diggs shut his eyes. He concentrated his senses and listened to the sound of the footsteps. Tactical teams wore rubber-soled shoes to dampen the sound of their approach, yet, years of being in the field has taught Diggs how to catch the feathery impressions of those soles.
He opened his eyes sharply.
"Olivia!" came his voice harshly.
"Yeah—"
"Move!"
He dragged the woman after her as quietly as possible, his gun hand on the wall. The wall curved away to the right and rounded a corner. In their struggle to get away, Diggs did not notice the incline on the floor. Olivia felt her feet plunge about an inch. Instinctively, she dug the tip of her shoes on the floor as they went by. Her left toe sunk into a shallow hole, square by the feel of it.
The floor climbed again, still with less than an inch of concrete, and they were on level ground. Lights appeared through the curve; voices followed.
"English, they spoke English!"
"Yes, those are CIA."
"But how do you know for sure?"
"You'd be surprised."
They hit a wall. It was Diggs who did actually, and Olivia bumped into him, hurting her nose on his elbow. It felt like running into a tree. The pain stung. White dots floated past her vision.
They backed into the wall.
"Ready?" Diggs asked.
"Yeah."
They waited with their guns raised.
Time passed. The darkness remained, a thick cloak of nothing. Olivia kept her gun up; she could feel Diggs’ energy beside her. He breathed like a baby at rest, leveled, and measured. When Diggs put his gun away, she heard the shuffling of it against his belt.
"We need to move."
"Are you sure?" Olivia put her gun away too. She remembered leaving the lamp along the way in their hurry.
She listened for footfalls, but there was none.
"Wait." She touched Diggs.
"What is it?"
Olivia turned back. They had hit a wall, and that didn't match what was on the map from Coleman through Mary Luca. Although she had suspected all along that the map might be incorrect. It was improbable that Professor Patrick Coleman mapped the temple by walking the complete length of it. If he didn't, then his map was more conjectured than verifiable reality.
She touched the rough blocks, caressed the joints where the blocks meet, without mortar. This was a verifiable reality before her.
"The map is wrong."
"Then, Coleman is wrong?"
"Yes, I believe he is."
In the dark, they could not see each other. But even Diggs could tell by orienting himself properly, that the wall must be some sort of hallway.
They turned away from the wall and hurried back as fast as they could.
Minutes later, Diggs stumbled on something in the dark. Beside him, Olivia had stopped walking, for she was standing where the floor dropped in gradient. She had stopped walking because it occurred to her that this point on the hallway, with the traps, was why the tactical team in pursuit hadn't shown up in the end.
"Olivia?"
"Yes?"
"There's something on the floor here—"
"Bodies?"
"Yeah, dead men, boots, and guns," Diggs whispered.
Olivia heard something scrape against the concrete. Then bright light bathed her where she stood. It snapped off again. Diggs had found a torchlight. He put it on again, and Olivia saw a sight that she had refused to get used to.
She retched once and staggered away. She continued to heave until she sprayed the floor with vomit, green slimy goo.
Diggs helped her up. He fetched a wate
r bottle from one of the bodies and gave her a drink. Lightheaded and faint, she rested against the wall.
There were about seven bodies, lacerated, limbs severed, and lots of blood. A body twitched, and Olivia felt like he was going to be sick again.
"Come on. We have to find Andrew."
Olivia roused herself. Diggs said, "Hold this." He gave her the torch. He pulled two guns from the frozen hold of two dead men.
"This gun is called a Bushmaster," He opened the chamber. "It's loaded full. Here, let me show you how to use it."
She paid attention as Diggs gave her a crash course on how to load and lock it. He pulled some more magazines from the rest of the bodies. He took two Rugers, also loaded. Lastly, they took two torches and batteries.
Diggs pulled a strap off a body. He checked it for bloodstains; there was none.
Olivia shined the torch down the corridor; it was deserted.
A flicker of light appeared far away, where the hole was.
They walked towards it.
—
Frank Miller and the others had also run into a wall of their own.
And Dr. Anabia Nassif had made the same inferences about the wall. He shared the same doubts about the map, just like Olivia.
Unlike Olivia and Diggs, however, they found a door by that wall, yet no traps in the concrete nearby. What providence refused to provide in traps, it did with armed tactical men, the other half of the team brought in by Kowalski.
And Kowalski was standing with his torch in Frank's face.
"Well, what do we have here?" He strutted around the group. "Where is the journalist?"
"We don't know what you are talking about," Miller said.
"We?"
Miller smiled.
"Why don't you answer for yourself, hm?"
He shined his torch from one face to the other. He went to Anabia, where the doctor stood by the wall. Kowalski shined his flashlight on the wall.
"What is that?"
Anabia looked at the wall and shrugged.
"Is that, like a key?"
"I don't know yet, still studying it."
"Where's the old man? He was supposed to be with you."
Anabia frowned in confusion. Kowalski strutted over to Miller. "I know you, Frank Miller, billionaire extraordinaire. What you are doing running around with a cave robber like Olivia Newton is what I don't get. But that's for later if you survive this night. Where is Rodriguez and Tami Capaldi?"
The Inca Temple Page 16