Chase Baker and the Golden Condor: (A Chase Baker Thriller Series No. 2) (12 page)

Leslie and Rodney are pressed up against the fire as far as
they can go without setting themselves ablaze. They are facing an army of
tarantulas as it begins to encroach on every bit of open space in the clearing.

“Stay still, guys,” I say softly from the clearing
perimeter. “Rodney, take hold of one of the logs that’s not burning entirely.
Toss it onto the spiders.”

Rodney looks at me wide eyed, then turns, staring down into
the fire. Slowly bending at the knees, he finds a log, grabs hold of an end
that’s not burning, tosses it onto the swarm at his feet. The spiders
immediately retreat, forming a wide circle around the burning log.

“Now Rodney,” I say, “can you find another one?”

Turning, he once again examines the fire. When he’s found a
log or a stick that looks promising, he reaches down for it, tosses it out a
further distance from the first log. Once more the spiders retreat, forming a
large open circle around the small torch-like flame.

“Now, I want you two to carefully step away from the fire,”
I say. “Use the smaller fires to get free of the clearing. Understand?”

“Roger that,” Rodney confirms. He takes hold of Leslie’s arm
and pulls. But she won’t move. Her eyes are fixed on the hairy black
tarantulas, on their never-ending movement, the way their eight legs are able
to make them scatter about rapidly in all directions, as if at any moment they
will run up her legs, dig their fangs into her skin and flesh.

“Leslie,” I go on, “close your eyes. Don’t look at the
spiders. Just take Rodney’s lead and go where he goes.”

She doesn’t say anything. She’s paralyzed. Catatonic.

“Leslie,” I say as calmly, but firmly, as possible. “You
need to get out of there before you get bitten. You need to trust Rodney.”

“Come on, Leslie,” Rodney says, his voice barely a whisper.
“Let’s go.”

He pulls her along onto the first clear ring. Drags her, is
more like it. The literary agent issues a cry and goes stone stiff and still.

“You have to keep moving, Leslie,” I insist. “Only a few
more steps and you’re clear.”

But to her those few steps must seem like miles and miles.

Rodney shoots me a look, which I interpret as
we don’t
move now, we’re going to be covered in killer spiders in a matter of seconds.

The second log set a few feet before him is losing its
flame. It’s about to go out, and to prove it, the spiders are once more closing
in on the area. That’s when Rodney decides to take matters into his own hands,
literally. Reaching out for Leslie, he takes her into his arms, lifting her up
and folding her over his shoulder in a classic fireman’s hold. He then leaps
his way out of the spider trap and to the safety of the jungle.

He comes to me, Leslie folded over his back, not making a
sound.

“I should have thought of that sooner,” he says, gently
letting her down.

“But you don’t like spiders any more than she does, do you?”

He shakes his head. “They creep me out.”

“Me too,” I say. “Give me snakes any day.”

“Bite your tongue, trailblazer,” he says. “What in God’s
name do you think is happening here? How could all these spiders exist much
less take over the clearing?”

“My guess is they were reclaiming what was theirs to begin
with.”

“How’s that?”

Grabbing my LED lamp off my belt, I flick it on and shine
the light up into the trees. That’s when we see it plain as day, only under the
cover of night, when all the nocturnal forms of life in the rainforest do their
eating and killing.

A spider web.

But this isn’t the garden variety spider web you find
wrapped around the flowers in your backyard garden. This is an almost solid
canopy of white silk that itself is filled with hundreds or perhaps thousands
of tarantulas both large and small.

“Oh dear God,” Rodney swallows. “We camped inside a spider’s
nest.”

“There you have the problem with making camp inside tropical
rainforest at night,” I whisper. Then, “Lady and gentleman, back away slowly.”

With Rodney once more lifting Leslie up and placing her over
his shoulder, we back away from the giant spider nest and head back out to the
trail.

“Now what?” Rodney says, setting a still wide-eyed and very
quiet Leslie down onto her feet.

“We find a place to rest our heads for the few more hours
until dawn,” I say. “Then, at first light, when the spiders are all snuggled
back into their silk bed for the day, we’ll grab our gear and make our way to
the mountain that houses the aircraft.”

Rodney takes a look around.

“Where exactly do you propose we lie down in a place that’s
positively crawling?” Leslie asks, her voice cracking with fear.

I look over one shoulder, then another.

Darkness all around.

Making a 365-degree sweep with the LED lamp, I spot an
ironwood tree. It’s one of the biggest, oldest, and most rugged trees of the
jungle. Thus its name. It also rarely houses army ants, which can be even more
deadly in the rainforest than spiders and snakes.

“I think I’ve just found us a bed,” I say, shining the light
on the tree.

Together we head the fifteen feet off-trail into the woods.
There’s several thick branches jutting out from the massive old trunk. Leaping
off my feet, I manage to grab onto the branch and, shimmying myself up, I swing
my right leg up and over the branch.

“Leslie, you’re next.”

I lower my hand, and she grabs onto it. I pull her up, just
far enough for her to swing her behind onto the branch. “Rodney?”

“No thanks, Chief,” he says. “Got me my own branch.” He
grabs hold of the branch on the other side of the tree and hefts himself up
like he’s doing a pull-up. But instead of making himself comfortable on the
branch, he drops back down to the jungle floor. “But I can’t even think of
sleep after the attack of the killer tarantulas. Tell you what, I’ll establish
a perimeter twenty or so feet out from this tree and take the first watch. You
two get some sleep.”

And with that, I watch big Rodney disappear into the thick
forest.

Leslie and I scoot ourselves back against the tree. The old
branch is so thick, we have room to spare, even with our sitting beside one
another. With Rodney being entirely out of sight and sound, it’s as if we have
our own room inside a five-star tree-hotel, even if the bed is a bit on the
hard side.

After a minute or two has passed, Leslie takes hold of my
hand, squeezes it. She turns to me. “Thanks for taking care of me back there.
It’s not like I thought I was going to die. It’s more like I
wanted
to
die before those spiders started crawling all over me, biting me.”

“I feel your pain,” I say, running my hand through her thick
hair. “We’re safe here. For now.”

“For now,” she whispers, moving her hand from my hand to
someplace else entirely. She begins undoing my belt buckle, then she unbuttons
my pants. She pulls me out. I’m as hard as this ironwood tree. Harder.
Unbuttoning her shorts, she gently pushes them down to her ankles. Then,
climbing over me, she takes hold of me and guides me into her. Suddenly all the
death of the day and the dangers of the jungle in the night disappear and I am
all alone in the world with Leslie. When I come to that place and she does too,
we let ourselves go without making so much as a whimper.

Later on, she pulls her shorts back up and snuggles into me.
I run my hands through her hair.

“Leslie,” I whisper, “I’m glad you’re with me.”

“Let’s go to sleep. You saved my life today. I wanted you to
know how thankful I am by giving us both a happy ending to remember.”

“I hope to save your life at least twice tomorrow,” I say.

She slaps my hand and together we quietly laugh. Soon I feel
her breathing become rhythmic, her chest rising and lowering with her every
gentle breath. Leaning back against the tree, I look out onto the darkness and
think about my words to Leslie … about saving her life tomorrow, and how
prophetic they are likely to be.

As sleep takes over, I find myself very far away from the
Amazon jungle. I am suddenly standing inside a four-walled sacristy in a most
holy cathedral in Turin, Italy. The cathedral is holy because of the sacred
relic it houses. The Holy Shroud of Turin. The burial cloth used to wrap
Jesus’s body immediately after he was removed from the cross. The linen that
bears the blood-soaked wounds on the wrists and ankles where nails the size of
spikes pierced them. The cloth that soaked up the blood from the crown of
thorns that was pushed so far down onto Christ’s head the pincers scraped the
bone of the skull. The cloth that bore witness to the blood and pain of forty
lashes from a cat-o-nine-tails, and that when viewed from the perspective of a
camera negative, shows up as an almost three-dimensional portrait of Christ the
Man. This is the Jesus I am staring at where he is horizontally hung from the
sacristy wall.

Something happens then.

The Shroud begins to move, tremble, as it takes shape and
the image of a man appears. A live man. That man, Jesus, emerges from the
Shroud, turns himself upright, and floats down to the floor so that he is
standing before me, his many wounds still bleeding, water and blood dripping
from the spear wound inflicted by the Roman soldier, Longinus, on his lower
right side.

All oxygen exits my lungs like the wind from a sail. I
collapse to my knees, my two hands clasped together as if in prayer. He comes
closer to me, holds out his hand, exposing a bleeding hole in his wrist.

“Do you believe in me?” he asks in his native Aramaic. I
don’t know the language, but somehow I understand his words precisely.

“I don’t know,” I say.

Reaching out, he touches my mouth with his hand, his
blood painting my lips. He then takes hold of my hand and clasps my index
finger with the two fingers on his hand. He forces my index finger through the
hole in his wrist.

“I died for you,” he says. “And you found me two thousand
years later.”

“Yes,” I say, feeling the warmth from his flesh and blood
wrapped around my finger. “I found your bones. I wrote a novel about it. It’s
called
The Shroud Key
.”

“Did you believe in me then? When you saw my bones?”

“I don’t know,” I say, as tears begin to stream down my
face. “Your body disappeared…again.”

He takes hold of my wrist, yanks my finger out of his
nail hole. “He who believeth in me shall have eternal life.”

“I want to believe,” I say. “I really do want to believe
in you. But who are you? Are you human? Are you born of this earth? Or
somewhere else entirely? Somewhere way out there?”

“The mysteries of life are many. The clues are few. You
and your species are not alien creatures, but then you are not all man either.
The power of God is far greater than man. The power of the universe is far
greater than God.”

“If I’m not all man, then who am I?”

“We have left behind many clues for you to understand
your beginning. None of them have convinced everyone of the existence of God.
None of them have convinced you of the existence of other worlds. Worlds
teaming with life.”

“Are you God?”

“I am your maker, and I come from a place far away from
here.”

That’s when something miraculous happens. The blood
disappears from his body, as if it were being soaked up by a sponge. His wounds
heal, and his body takes on a new shape and color altogether. His body shrinks,
his head becomes more ovular, his hair and beard retracting back into the skull
and face, his deep brown eyes turning big, black, and egg-shaped. His arms and
legs lose most of their mass until they become gray skin and bone. A light
emerges from behind him where the sacristy wall was. The light is brighter than
the sun. This man, this God, this creature from another world … he turns and
disappears into the brilliant light.