Moon Mask (12 page)

Along with the zombie-like groans of the dying, their vacant expressions, wan complexions and often bloodied clothes, it felt like he had stepped into a horror story.

Indeed, he supposed he had.

“You don’t seem convinced,” he accused the Russian as King and Sid stepped into the awning with them.

Nadia frowned. “I am relatively certain the professor’s death was caused by cardiovascular failure-”

“But you don’t think it was caused by the virus.” It wasn’t a question. He had seen the doubt in her eyes as Assistant-Director Nebrinski had described the expedition’s affliction.

She sighed and ran her hands through her dark hair. King and Sid studied her closely.

“No,” she finally admitted. “Something just doesn’t seem right about it. The symptoms are similar – aching joints, flu-like illness, and severe skin irritation.” She scratched her own arm subconsciously. “The deaths, also, are fairly consistent with the virus. Organ failure-”

“Then why the scepticism?” King cut her off.

Nadia glanced at him. “
Leptospirosis
is generally caused by the introduction of animal urine into the system.”

“Sounds yummy,” Raine joked.

“But if that was the case, why are you two not infected?” she glanced at Raine and King. “I presume you are still not experiencing any of the symptoms?”

“I feel fine,” King replied.

“What can we say?” Raine said. “Benny and I are just your shining example of manliness. Right, Benny?”

“I guess,” was King’s only reaction. Raine had noticed the other man’s coldness towards him return following the sobering events of the morning. When Nebrinski had mentioned the deployment of U.S. Special Forces he had tried to keep his expression neutral, but he had noticed King’s intense gaze fall on him. He was sharp and focussed. Right now, that could be a problem for him.

He tried to steer the conversation back on track. “So, if Benny and I have some sort of immunity to this bug, can’t you just replicate it or something?” he asked.

The Russian arched an eyebrow. “If only everything was as simple as your mind, Mister Raine,” she said scathingly. Several sharp responses bubbled up inside of Raine but he kept silent, watching Nadia’s beautiful features. “The truth is,” she continued, “that while everyone but you two are showing symptoms of the illness, there is no indication of the virus in
anyone.
”

Raine saw his own shock and confusion mirrored in King and Sid’s faces. “What?”

“How’s that possible?” Sid asked.

“I do not know,” Nadia admitted. “The blood tests I have done are basic, I’ll admit, and I’m sure the professionals at John Hopkins have access to much more sophisticated equipment than we have here.” In truth, the expedition had little more than a glorified first aid kit. “Nevertheless, I find it difficult to believe that I would find no traces of the virus in any of the infected people. Not even the dead ones.”

“That is because there is
no
virus!” a new voice descended on the conversation. They all turned to see Raphael del Vega push out from behind the tent flaps where he had been eavesdropping. The wide shouldered Venezuelan militiaman had an ugly boil on his left cheek and his every step, his every word, seemed to deplete his dwindling energy reserves.

“You should be resting,” Nadia scolded him. After he had helped them bring McKinney to the mess tent, the exertion had severely weakened him.

He ignored her though. “It is not a virus! It is not an illness!” His wild, bloodshot eyes settled on King. “It is a curse! I told you to return the mask to where you found it! You have awoken the Evil Spirit!”

“There are no Evil Spirits and there are no curses,” Nadia told him sternly, obviously in no mood to entertain the local superstitions.

“Yes there are,” Raine said before he even realised what he was saying. He felt everyone’s eyes shift to him. “The Curse of the Moon Mask.” He nodded at King. “You said that when that slave ship reached the New World, all the crew was dead, killed by some unknown disease. They even had boils or blisters or whatever on them.”

Nadia’s irritation only increased at the mention of the Moon Mask. “You believe that the mask you found yesterday is cursed?” she asked King incredulously.

Raine could see that this was not the first time King had considered this, but with so much going on he had not had the opportunity to voice his opinion.

“Not in any mystical way,” he defended himself. “But, what if, I don’t know. . . What if there is some sort of bacteria on the mask which produces these blisters? Or fungus? Or . . . something?”

“What about radiation?” Sid asked. “Could the mask be radioactive at all?”

That was something Raine hadn’t considered. It seemed stupid to him now that it hadn’t occurred to him earlier.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Vomiting, blistering . . . all the symptoms are just like radiation sickness.”

“It would explain why Karen got ill before anyone else,” King added. “She was exploring the section of the tunnels nearest to the mask.”

“But if that’s the case,” Sid frowned, glancing at Raine and King. “Why aren’t you two both affected? You both touched the mask. You should be more ill than anyone-”

“This is all very interesting conjecture,” Nadia cut in, glancing at the bewildered looking del Vega and back again. “But I have already considered radioactivity. Geiger counter readings were negligible.”

“But have you scanned the mask itself?” King insisted.

“I’ve scanned the people who have died, Ben!” Nadia snapped angrily. “I’ve checked the people who are still dying! There is no sign of radiation,” she stated firmly.

“But there is no sign of the virus, either,” King pointed out.

“It is the curse,” del Vega interjected.

Nadia glared at them each in turn, silencing any further discussion. “There are almost two hundred sick and dying people in here,” she pointed back inside the mess tent. “We have no properly qualified physician. I am all these people have, and you want me to neglect them whilst I investigate some ancient
curse
?” She shook her head, exasperated.

No one said anything further and for several seconds they all simply stood there, listening to the hammer of the rain on the canvas. Then the Russian turned and headed back into the tent to tend to her patients.

After a few seconds, del Vega went back inside, followed shortly after by King and Sid. Raine remained outside. He turned to take in the obscured view. The luscious green of the Amazon was totally concealed by the blanket of the storm. Things here were going from bad to worse. With the death of the expedition’s leader, they were only going to deteriorate until their knights in shining armour arrived in their helicopters.

But the expedition’s saviours were his enemy and they were out there now, hidden in the clouds, closing with every second.

One thing was certain. He had to get off this mountain top before the soldiers arrived, virus, radiation or curse be damned.

Checking that the tent flap was closed behind him, he darted out into the storm.

Airborne over Venezuela

The
black plane battled through the storm, its propellers working hard as it banked lower towards the tree-line. On its radar screen, three
blips
indicated the positions of the enemy’s helicopters closing fast on the summit.

The leader of the assault team knew he didn’t have to be concerned about those choppers seeing them. The modified Catalina Flying Boat had been retrofitted with stealth technology, rendering it almost invisible to radar. Nevertheless, he was angry that the enemy had almost beaten them to the target, and even angrier that his attack plan had been disrupted by the storm. Had it not, his team could still have beaten the helicopters to the camp, parachuted in as planned, secured the target and evacuated before the choppers got there.

Now, however, they had needed to go to Plan B.

“I have the river in sight,” the pilot called through his communications unit.

“Okay, take us down. Get us as close to the north face as you can.”

He felt the plane drop from under him as the pilot dived through the storm towards the snaking line of the river which circled the island in the jungle.

With the summit’s heavy vegetation, there was nowhere to touch down and parachuting through the storm would be too dangerous. Now they had to land on the river and scale the north face of the mountain and hope they made it to the target before the enemy.

“Sir,” the co-pilot called. “I’ve just picked up another helicopter on radar, closing from the north.”

The leader had expected this and he felt the exhilaration of the chase begin. While his team had beaten his two competitors to the mountain, he had been hindered by the storm.

As the Flying Boat’s hull touched down upon the river and the pilot shut down the engines, the leader knew that the race was now truly on to be the first to unravel the secret of Sarisariñama.

Sarisariñama Tepui,

Venezuela,

Nathan
Raine took one last look back through the mist-shrouded trees at the outline of the expedition camp. A surge of guilt swelled up through him but he forced it back down. They would be fine. The medical teams were less than an hour away now. Besides, he wasn’t a doctor. There was nothing more he could do.

Nevertheless, he had trained for years to never leave a fallen man behind. Tucking tail and running now felt wrong.

He slipped on his head-set and reached up for the Huey’s overhead controls. His control board lit up, the chopper’s wipers swished across the windshield, pushing aside the water to reveal a sodden form staring at him from out in the rain.

A gun was levelled at him through the glass.

“Don’t!” Benjamin King warned, raising his voice to be heard over the pounding of raindrops.

Raine felt a laugh escape him. He should have known that King would have been watching out for him. The archaeologist was more paranoid than he was! For whatever reason he didn’t trust Raine and, caught red handed, he couldn’t really blame him.

“Hey Benny,” he called out a casual greeting. “Need a lift?”

King ignored him and yelled back. “You heard what Nebrinski said! If this disease gets outs into a wider population, the effects could be-”

“Believe it or not, Benny,” Raine cut him off, “I wasn’t really just going to fly back to Caracas and infect the entire city’s population.”

“I suppose you were just, what . . .
dusting
, then?” King indicated with the gun the overhead controls. The movement afforded Raine a better glance of the weapon and he realised it was actually a flare gun.

“You gonna shoot me, Benny?”

“If I have to!” King’s voice was firm but Raine could see the lack of conviction in his eyes. The rain hammered down on the archaeologist, running down his dark skin and he had to keep wiping his eyes clear.

Raine sighed. “Look,” he said as he removed his headset and rubbed the bridge of his nose. The effects of the previous night’s whisky session and the hellish day since had swelled into a killer headache. “I’m not an idiot, or a selfish murderer for that matter. I’m not going anywhere near civilisation. I’ve got enough fuel to get me to a safe house I know in the jungle. There’s food and water enough to survive on for two weeks and it’s over a hundred miles to the nearest settlement. I’ll hole up for a fortnight, make sure I don’t get any of the symptoms before-”

“What are you running from?”

The question seemed to come right out of the blue, despite it being an obvious one to ask. “Who says I’m running from anything?”

King said nothing. What was there to say? Raine couldn’t deny that he was running, and it was obvious who he was running from. The American soldiers. What King really wanted to know was
why
he was running.

“We all have our dirty little secrets, Benny,” he replied. “You know that.”

“Sure I do,” King agreed. “But mine don’t plunge me into panic at the mention of the United States Special Forces . . . or the idea of a medical evac to the States.” He narrowed his eyes. “You’re a wanted man, aren’t you?”

Raine pursed his lips in thought. “Let’s just say that the U.S. Government would probably be a little on the merry-side of happy if chance landed me on a medical evac back home.” He shrugged, slipped on his headset again and turned back to start the Huey’s warm-up sequence.

“Don’t!” King repeated more forcefully this time. “Get out of the helicopter!” King practically roared the words, anger coursing through him. But Raine shot back an equally angry, equally stubborn gaze. The pressure was mounting. The soldiers would arrive soon and it wouldn’t take long for them to discover who he was.

“You’ll have to shoot me,” he told King. He flipped a switch. The cockpit came to life, the engines started whining.

“Don’t think I won’t do it.”

Raine ignored him as he worked the controls expertly. The huge propellers began to shudder into motion.

“Raine!”

The tail rotor began spinning; the main propellers spun faster and faster.

“Raine!” King screamed at him and the vehemence of his voice caught the pilot’s attention. Raine spun just in time to see the flare explode from the gun in King’s hand and shoot through the air. He reacted with razor sharp reflexes, throwing open the cockpit door and hurling himself out.

As he hit the muddy ground, the flare struck the chopper’s bubble-like windscreen and detonated. Glass exploded everywhere in a display of pink and red fireworks.

Raine rolled to his feet, covering his head until all the glass had settled on the ground. Beneath the spinning rotor blades his hair and clothes whipped around him, churning the falling rain into a vortex.

“You crazy son of a bitch!” he yelled at King.

“I warned you!” King said, dropping the now useless flare gun and staring at his hands in disbelief. But Raine didn’t notice his remorse. Anger flashed through his mind, his heartbeat thudded in his ears, mixed with sudden dread, fear and urgency! He stared at the chopper - useless now without a windshield - and then glanced at the mountaintop around him. The north face was probably scalable
.
If he headed off now then-