Burial Ground (39 page)

"You willingly risked all of our lives
without a word of warning? Look over there. That man wasn't just
killed. He was ripped apart!"

"I didn't lie to any of you. Hunter did
drown. The medical examiner's report confirmed as much. The only
fact that I chose to omit was that he had been stabbed in the back
twice prior to immersion in the river. We had no way of knowing
that we would find anything like this when we arrived."

"You should have told us," Sam snapped. Her
hands shook with rage. "Now we're in the exact same situation and
nobody has any clue what happened to these men, what could happen
to
us
!"

"They have a right to know," Galen said. The
beam on his helmet washed out his features.

"This is getting us nowhere," Colton said.
"We need to formulate a plan and---"

"How's this for a plan?" Sam asked through
bared teeth. "We get the hell out of here while we still can."

She whirled and stormed out of the cavern.
Whether they joined her or not, she no longer cared. Her thoughts
were a chaotic jumble. Her childhood friend had been stabbed and
the man she had known and trusted for nearly her entire life had
lied to her about it. A slideshow of horrors fueled the rising
panic. The carnage all around her, from the ancient remains to the
modern. The jaguar carcass in the clearing and the tree surrounded
by ruined alpaca bones. The Chachapoya chief's parting words.
Let them pass. They are dead already.
And they were, weren't
they?

Damn the rest of them. She was leaving this
fortress right now. And either they followed her or she would have
to find a way to live with their deaths on her conscience.

But at least she would still be alive.

5:00 p.m.

Merritt had been transported to a different
place and time entirely. The moment he had stepped around that
gnarled ceiba tree and faced the deep black maw in the mountain, he
had frozen mid-stride. In his mind, smoke boiled out of the orifice
on the cries of the wounded. The jungle around him vanished and the
world became an eternity of sand. Consciously, he understood that
none of this was real, that the hell before him was a product of
the deep-seated guilt, shame, and horror that he had until now
managed to repress, but he was helpless against the illusion. He
had run half the globe away only to end up right back where he had
started.

He wished his prescriptions hadn't been
stolen, but even with the antipsychotic and anti-anxiety drugs on
board, he knew there was still no way he would have been able to go
in there. It was a physiological reaction beyond his control. His
legs were leaden, his feet rooted to the earth. His hands grew cold
from lack of circulation and the sensation of dizziness worsened.
His chest heaved faster and faster and yet he still felt as though
he couldn't breathe.

How long had the others been in there? How
long had he been standing here, crippled by the irrational terror
from the past? There was death all around him. The threat of the
bloodshed to come lingered in the air. This was the time when they
needed him most, when he needed to be sharp and focused, and he was
useless even to himself as he cowered before the memories of a life
long since abandoned.

With supreme effort, he forced his stilted
legs to move, if only in increments of inches.

The raindrops bludgeoned him, threatening to
drive him to his knees.

Voices echoed from the shaft as though from
miles away. Beneath them, the buzzing sound of television static
metamorphosed into rapidly approaching footsteps. A weak light
blossomed from the core of the darkness. It grew larger and
brighter as he watched. A silhouetted figure took form in the
center, moving directly toward him. All he could clearly discern
was the cape-like outline of a poncho and a pair of slender
legs.

"We're leaving," Sam said, bursting from the
shadows. "Now."

The sense of relief that flooded through
Merritt freed his tight muscles so completely that he nearly
collapsed.

Sam blew past him as Jay and Dahlia emerged
from the tunnel with the birdman at their heels. Before Merritt
found the strength to turn and join them, he looked back into the
darkness. No one else was coming.

"Wait!" he called. His legs felt like
noodles, but they strengthened with each stride away from the
crevice until he was able to jog. He crashed through the underbrush
and ducked around the others until he caught up with Sam at the
front of the procession. They were headed north toward the rising
rumble of the waterfall and the fallen section of the fortification
where they had initially entered. The southern route would likely
have been shorter and more direct, but he didn't blame her in the
slightest for wanting to avoid the corpses.

She scrabbled down the black stone rubble,
and when she reached the ground, made a beeline toward the trail
that led into the jungle. What had formerly been a trickle of water
was now a stream racing along the path, the mud beneath it as slick
as ice. With the weight of their packs, balance was untenable, yet
Sam refused to slow.

Merritt glanced back and confirmed that the
rest were still following them. Jay had been forced to cradle the
camera to his chest to keep from slipping, while both Dahlia and
Galen were already covered in muck.

Sam squealed. He turned around to see her
sliding on her backpack through the runoff. At the bend ahead, she
slammed into the buttress roots of a massive tree with a resounding
crack. She rolled onto her side and moaned.

Merritt slid sideways down the trail,
bracing his hand on the ground for stability.

"Are you all right?" He helped her to her
feet and gave her a quick once over. No visibly broken bones. No
sign of blood. She rubbed her forehead where a knot was already
beginning to swell.

"I'm fine," she said, brushing away his
hands. "We don't have time for this."

She turned her back on him and continued
down the trail.

Ahead, the rumble of running water called to
them. They had to be near the stream that divided this mountain
from the next. Beyond lay the sheer rock formation that contained
the cavern with the
purunmachus
and the path back down to
the lake where they had spent the previous night.

The sun had already begun to set and
twilight claimed the forest.

It would be completely dark in under an
hour. No moonlight would be able to permeate the storm clouds and
mist, which now formed a haze around them as it crept to the ground
from the canopy.

The path ahead would grow increasingly
treacherous.

Their window of opportunity had closed.

There was no way they were getting off the
mountain tonight.

5:13 p.m.

They had barely heard their prey coming in
time to duck from the path and into the jungle. Tasker didn't enjoy
being surprised, but that was exactly what had happened. From where
he crouched in a cage of tented roots with ant-covered vines draped
over his head, he watched them race down to the swollen stream and
attempt to ford it to no avail. The dark-haired woman, Carson, had
tried to hop to where the first stone lurked beneath several inches
of racing water and had nearly been swept off her feet, would have
were it not for a last second save by the pilot, who had dragged
her to the muddy shore. She now screamed up into the raging storm
in frustration and futility. The others paced the bank nervously.
He could almost hear their thoughts as they contemplated the
possibility of braving the rapids.

What had spooked them to flight? Had they
sensed his approach? He couldn't believe that was the case. Neither
he nor McMasters had done anything to warrant their suspicion. They
must have encountered something that frightened them up the path
ahead...but what?

Again his mind recalled the carcasses they
had disentombed in the cave, but he chased the image away and
focused on the task at hand.

It would be simple enough to take down their
targets at the river's edge right now. Five quick shots and they
could drag the bodies into the underbrush, but where were the other
men in their party? Had they secured the high ground at this very
moment? Were he and McMasters pinned down under unseen sights? He
thought it unlikely. If that were the case, then that meant the
others were using the panicked civilians as bait, and that went
against their job description and any even moderately developed
sense of ethics. He and McMasters needed to stick to cover for the
time being. It was too soon to betray their presence. They had a
solid plan in place. Straying from it would only allow variables to
crop up at the least opportune moments. They had been patient thus
far. It wouldn't be much longer now.

The pilot attempted to console Carson, but
she swatted his hands aside, whirled away from the impasse, and
stomped back toward the path.

Tasker pressed back deeper into the blind.
Brown ants crawled over his face and scalp. He suppressed the
sensation.

Carson sloshed up the muddy slope a mere ten
feet to his left. Even over the clamor of the rain in the upper
canopy, he could hear her crying. The pilot followed, trying in
vain to console her, even though he appeared every bit as rattled.
The pudgy academic fought to keep up, while the blonde and her
cameraman trailed, visibly struggling with the treacherous
footing.

Tasker caught snippets of conversation.

"...wait out the storm..."

"...try again in the morning..."

"...if we make it that long."

"...you saw the condition of the bodies..."

None of them so much as glanced in his
direction.

They were distracted, which only served his
purposes.

But what
had
they discovered? And
where was their security contingent?

5:37 p.m.

There was no way in hell that Colton was
abandoning a fortune in gold now that it was firmly in his grasp.
He had taken command of the situation and had his men running
around making the necessary preparations. With the way the level of
the river had risen even while they crossed it hours ago, he knew
there was no chance the others would make it beyond the engorged
banks tonight. Not with the way the rain continued to fall. They
would return at any moment, but in the meantime, he and his men
needed to ready themselves for the coming night. The fortress was
too large and sprawling, and too thick with vegetation to easily
patrol, so they needed to fortify a defensible perimeter. But
against what were they defending themselves? While he had initially
scoffed at Russell's nonsensical blatherings, the evidence was
impossible to ignore. The broken and disarticulated skeletons
everywhere. The slaughtered remains of Gearhardt's son's party. The
feathers, and especially the feces containing human matter.

He couldn't fool himself into thinking that
firepower was the solution. After all, Rippeth had been armed to
the teeth when he had been torn apart.

How could anything like what Russell
proposed have survived so long without being discovered, even this
high in the unexplored cloud forest? He thought of Carson's theory,
that the primitive Mesoamerican tribes had known about them and had
worshipped them as gods. Unfortunately, all of those venerable
civilizations---the Aztec, the Inca, the Maya---had all vanished from
the face of the planet at the height of their power. Did one
correlate to the other?

There was no time for speculation. There was
still too much left to do, and night was already falling as the sun
vanished behind the peak above them.

The first order of business had been to
crack open the case and suitably arm themselves. He and his men had
each slung one of the SCARs over their shoulders and grabbed a pair
of both incendiary and fragmentary grenades. They now scurried
around the site following his commands.

Webber had been dispatched to light fires in
all of the columns surrounding the outer fortifications. While the
iron cages protected the flames from the rain, they barely burned
six inches tall with the limited amount of dry kindling and wood
they had been able to find. Tending to them would be a full-time
job.

Morton had set to work with the machete,
clearing the area immediately surrounding the main stone building.
If the former occupants of the village had determined that the
domicile was the safest place to take refuge, then who was he to
second guess them? There was no time to find a more secure
location.

Sorenson was nearly finished reassembling
the fallen stone barricades that had once blocked the doorways, and
was preparing to move on to his next task.

Leo had managed to light the handful of
torches that formed a half-circle around the stone platforms and
the front half of the main dwelling between repeated attempts to
raise the outside world on the satellite phone. He hadn't even been
able to get a signal. Sure, the storm affected their reception, but
Colton knew it was more than just that, and he was close to proving
it.

The ground-penetrating radar had shown that
the paving stones had been laid on a solid foundation of bedrock,
as he had expected. Granted, there were varying thicknesses in the
strata, but all of it was solid rock to the furthest depths of the
sensing device's range. The magnetometer, however, confirmed his
hypothesis.

He studied the small monitor on the
magnetometer, which looked like a haphazardly assembled vacuum
cleaner made of scraps of metal, as he walked in a straight line.
The harness strapped to his shoulders allowed him to hold the unit
suspended several inches above the ground. Different types of rocks
were displayed in subtle shades of gray and black as the signal
released by the magnetometer was interpreted and analyzed to
determine the magnetic properties of the ground. As he had hoped,
capillaries of gold extended from the main vein. Of course, there
were also large deposits of quartz and especially magnetite, which
composed the bulk of the stone underfoot and appeared nearly black
on the monitor. And what was another name for magnetite? Lodestone.
In previous centuries, its magnetic properties had been used to
polarize needles to create functional compasses. The ground was
positively packed with enough magnetic material to interfere with
any satellite uplink.