Chase Baker and the Golden Condor: (A Chase Baker Thriller Series No. 2) (11 page)

The jungle is so dark in the late afternoon, we’re forced to
utilize our LED flashlights to illuminate the narrow path. While Leslie and I
grip our flashlights in our respective hands, Rodney uses a headlamp that’s
been belted above the brim of his baseball cap.

The jungle truly comes alive when the sun dies for the day.

Spider monkeys are hopping from one branch to another,
coming close enough to get a good look at us, then scampering off into the
leafy cover. All manner of insects crawl up and down the thick trees located on
both sides of the trail, while up ahead, Rodney spots a red and black snake,
kicking it back into the bush with his boot.

We move slowly, quietly, careful to listen for any further
sign of trouble from hostile natives. But a half hour into the mostly level
hike, we encounter nothing other than the symphony of sounds created by birds,
monkeys, and insects. When we come upon a clearing where the rooftop canopy
gives way to the shine of a waxing moon, I know we’ve found a decent spot to
make camp for the night.

What I’m not aware of until Rodney searches the perimeter of
the small square-shaped area, is that the guides beat us here already, and died
because of it.

I reach out and pull Leslie into me, pressing her face against
my chest so that she is blinded to the sight of our three guides who have been
stripped naked and nailed to three separate trees by their wrists and ankles.
Their tongues have been cut out and their bellies have been sliced open below
the bellybutton, their intestines having spilled onto the ground. Red army ants
have swarmed, gathering all around the raw, sickly purple and yellow
intestines, not only devouring the portion that’s on the ground, but also
utilizing the hanging pieces of organ as ladders in order to gain access to the
tortured men’s eviscerated insides.

“Holy Christ,” Rodney spits, his voice thick and sick. “I’ve
never seen anything like this in my life. Not even in Iraq. Fucking hostile
natives will pay for this. You can count on that.”

“This isn’t the work of hostile natives,” I say, swallowing
something dry and bitter. “They’re trying to kill us simply because we’re
trespassing on their territory, simple as that. This here…This is a bit more
complicated and it’s the work of someone or something else.”

“You mean we’re not alone out here?” Leslie says. I feel her
shivering and trembling against me. Then, “What I mean is, there’s other people
out here than just a bunch of angry men in leather thongs?”

“What the hell do they want?” Rodney poses.

I shrug my shoulders. “Could be they want the same thing we
want.”

“But how? No one knows about the aircraft but us.”

“You don’t know that. But whoever did this knows all about
the tortures of war. I used to work with Vietnam vets back in my sandhogging
and excavating days. This here … these men crucified to the trees here … it’s
an old trick the Communist North Vietnamese used to great effect to warn American
GIs to stay away from their territory. The Cuban revolutionaries under Fidel
Castro used the same exact tactic against Batista loyalists. It’s their way of
warning us to stay away from whatever it is we’re going to find up on that
jungle mountain.”

“You call this a warning?” Rodney says. “I call this
cold-blooded murder.”

“What did these guides ever do to hurt anybody?” Leslie
asks.

“Their only sins are having been in the wrong place at the
wrong time,” I say. “The killing is entirely impersonal … a means to an end.”

Rodney flashes his light on their faces—on their bloodied,
tongue-severed, gaping mouths and at facial skin that was once richly dark, but
that now has turned pale white. That’s when I can see that the eyes on all three
of them are moving.

“Rodney,” I swallow. “They’re still alive.”

Gently, I push Leslie away.

“Turn around,” I demand.

“Why? What are you going to do?”

“Just do it, Leslie.”

Then, pulling out my .45, I take aim and put a bullet apiece
into each of their foreheads.

Things seem to move in slow motion after that, as the sounds of
the jungle go silent, and the flash of the discharged bullets burns black holes
into our retinas. We just stand there waiting for something to happen. But
nothing more can happen, because the guides are now mercifully very dead and
very gone. Like a great writer once said, “The dead look so terribly dead when
they’re dead.” These three men are no exception.

“Do we at least cut them down?” Leslie asks, tears running
down her face.

“No,” I say. “For now we leave them and find another spot to
camp, closer to the river. We’re exposed and my guess is they’re watching us
right now.”

“You’re really going to just leave them?” Rodney asks, a
painful tension in his voice.

“They’re dead. In the morning we’ll come back, cut them
down, and give them a proper burial. For now, staying in one place for too long
is just too damned dangerous. I just discharged my weapon three times. That in
itself is enough of a giveaway, don’t you think?”

Rodney bobs his head, runs an open hand up and down his
face, as if it’s possible to simply wipe away the fear and disgust he is surly
feeling. “What about their supplies?”

“Leave it,” I say. “We’ll survive on what we have in our
packs.”

He just stands there, looking at me like I’m as evil as the
men who truly killed these three guides.

“Let’s move, Rodney,” I say. “I mean it.”

“Yes, sir,” he barks, brushing past me so hard, I nearly
fall to the ground.

Rodney goes silent for the next half hour while we trek on
through the black jungle, until we come to another clearing where I decide to
make camp for what will surely be a long night of no sleep.

With our tents gone, along with our sleeping bags, we have to
improvise, which means we’ll sleep in our clothing on bare ground made softer
by piles of dead leaves and vegetation that we gather up by hand. We make a
fire and proceed to boil water in one of the small aluminum cooking pots that
Rodney is carrying with him. Once the water is boiled, we pour it into three freeze-dried
packets of beef stroganoff.

Sitting around the fire, we eat in silence. Rather, we force
our food down.

While I stare into the fire, the events of the day haunt me.
I go back to the beginning. Flying into the Sacred Valley, spotting two long-haired
men sitting in a Jeep. Men who were armed and observing us as we left the
landing strip in the truck. That’s when an idea, if not a revelation, hits me.

“Listen,” I say, after a time. “The attack by hostiles today
might not have been the work of the natives themselves.”

Leslie turns to me, her food still resting in her lap,
barely touched.

“But we witnessed them attacking us. How could it not have
been them?”

“It might have been the work of the Tupac Amaru loyalists
who fed a pack of lies to the natives.”

“Tupac Ama what?” Leslie says. “I thought Tupac was a rapper
who died.”

“The original Tupac was an ancient Incan who resisted the
Spanish conquistadors led by Pizarro. His name has been borrowed by a group of
Peruvian terrorists who backed a communist, Castro-like revolution in the
country. Tupac is a band of butchers who will stop at nothing to get what they
want. Or, at least, they used to be. They usually make money by kidnapping
wealthy tourists and demanding a huge ransom in exchange for his or her
release.”

“Why doesn’t somebody stop them?” Leslie says. “The army?
The government?”

“The government did stop them for a while, back in the
1990s. But they’ve made a resurgence in recent years along with the rise of
ecotourism and all those rich, green, and sustainable tourists who spend
thousands to camp out in the rainforest in order to make themselves feel a hell
of lot less guilty about crapping up the environment with their SUVs.”

“I’ve heard of Tupac,” Rodney says, after a time. “They live
in the jungle. They are always on the move. Never in one place for very long.”

“Exactly,” I say, “which makes them hard to track. But if
they are onto us and our plan to uncover the aircraft, my guess is they will
want it as much as we do.”

“What the hell would they do with an ancient aircraft?”
Rodney asks. “I’m not even sure what we’re going to do with the damn thing, if
the damn thing is indeed there.”

“Now you tell us,” Leslie says, making a smirk. “Thought you
could fly anything, Rod?”

“Listen,” I go on, “a find of that magnitude would solidly
place Tupac back on the map as a world terrorist player. The Peruvian
government would have no choice but to give in to their demands or else risk
losing the one piece of evidence that not only proves the ancients possessed
the knowledge of flight, but that intelligent life has existed in the universe
for thousands, perhaps millions of years. The entire world would take notice of
them. Fear them. Give into them. Obey them.”

“Why would they want to kill us if they want the aircraft?”
Leslie points out. “Wouldn’t they want to let us live long enough for us to
find it for them?”

“She’s got a point,” Rodney says. “We’ve been fighting for
our lives since we stepped into the jungle eight hours ago. It’s pretty amazing
we’re still alive.”

I set down the now half-empty bag of beef stroganoff onto
the bare earth, stare into the fire.

“Here’s my no bullshit assessment: My guess is that we
should indeed be dead right now. That whoever is behind the killing, be it
Tupac or somebody else, knows enough to let a few of us live.”

“That way we lead them to the aircraft,” Rodney intuits.

“Exactly,” I say.

The big man cocks his head, purses his lips. “Those hostiles
sure had me convinced they wanted to put an arrow through my head.”

“I’m just giving you an assessment of the situation,” I say.
“I could be dead wrong.”

“Nice choice of words, trailblazer. How will we know if said
assessment is correct?”

“If we live through the night, it will be correct. But if we
die, I’m wrong.” I get up from the ground, brush the soil off my cargo pants,
toss what’s left of my stroganoff into a plastic garbage bag. “I’ll take first
watch,” I say.

With that, I step away from the fire and into a forbidden
darkness.

I choose to stand, rather than sit. That way I can be sure of
staying awake. Staring out into the eternal darkness of the rainforest, I use
my ears more than my vision, which is useless. I can only wonder if I’m being
watched by the men responsible for killing Carlos and for crucifying those three
guides. My guess is that I am. It confirms my suspicions for me: They need us.
Need
me
anyway, to show them the way to the aircraft.

Raising my right hand, I pat the pocket on my bush jacket
that contains Keogh II’s digitally enhanced map. Without it, I’m a dead man.
We’re all dead.

Question is, how do the Tupac Amaru know we have such a map?
How do they know about our expedition? About the aircraft? How do they know the
purpose of our mission in the first place?

The two men sitting in the Jeep earlier…They must be Tupac
and what’s more, they were waiting for us when we landed this morning in the
Sacred Valley. Somebody had to have tipped them off. But who and how? Keogh III
doesn’t seem the type to take security measures for granted. If the Tupac knew about
this mission prior to our arriving, then it had to be an inside job by someone
who has no problem with making a deal with the devil. But who exactly? Carlos?
Rodney? Carlos is dead, leaving only Rodney. It’s possible I could confront him
about the situation. But then, maybe the better thing to do is to hold off and
let things play out. Either way, I plan on locating that aircraft by tomorrow
evening. And when I do, neither Tupac nor any other hostile will get the jump
on me, precisely because I will already have texted our precise location to the
Peruvian authorities.

I swat a mosquito off the back of my neck. I listen to the
constant hum and buzz of the insects foraging for food. The jungle is a loud
place at night. A very alive and dangerous place. But that doesn’t mean I’m not
beginning to feel the onset of exhaustion. Even standing, I feel my eyelids
growing heavy.

Until a loud shriek rips through the jungle.

Sprinting back through the thick vegetation, the branches and
twigs slapping at the exposed skin on my forearms and on my face, I see the
light of the campfire through breaks in the trees and head right for it. When I
come to the small clearing I come to a dead stop. It takes me a moment to
comprehend what I’m seeing. It looks like a scene from out of a cheap horror
movie from the 1950s. But it’s not a scene from a horror movie.

It’s real.

The dozens of black tarantulas that are converging upon the
clearing and surrounding both Leslie and Rodney are all too real.