Ramsey's Gold (Drake Ramsey Book 1) (37 page)

Drake appraised him. “You’d do that?”

Spencer waved nonchalantly. “It’s purely driven by self-interest. I can’t collect my cut if you get screwed, now can I?”

Drake nodded, not entirely convinced by Spencer’s gruff demeanor. “I suppose that’s one way to look at it. Good thinking.”

“Yeah. Now, why don’t you tell me everything you know about the mad Russian? Seeing as we’re sharing openly and honestly? Because I’m getting a bad feeling about this the longer I’m out here, you know?”

Drake sat back and took a deep drink of water before beginning. When he was finished, Spencer whistled.

“Boy, you don’t do things in half measures, do you?”

“Look, I have no idea whether Palenko has a nuke or something, but whatever it is, the CIA is interested enough to send a team to keep it out of unfriendly hands. So they believe it’s worth pursuing. Whether or not it is, who knows? Did he seem like he’d be able to design a working toilet, much less something that could provide energy for the planet or destroy it?”

“Hey, Howard Hughes had a similar look, and he managed some amazing feats. I wouldn’t let that fool you. Besides, who knows what made him flip out and start the Inca god thing? For all we know he was schizophrenic. Heard voices. Maybe he went off his meds. Or maybe the voices got so loud once he was in the Amazon, he had to obey. You can’t try to figure out crazy. Because you’re not nuts, so you have no idea what was going on in his brain.”

Drake nodded. Spencer was right. About a lot of things, apparently. Spencer was more than his appearance would suggest, and there was considerable thought behind the stone-faced façade.

“You know, something just occurred to me. If we find the treasure, we might also run across the mystery ore. If we do, what would you like to do with it? Drop it in the river so it’s lost for all time? Or turn it over to the CIA?” Spencer asked.

“Beats me. I hadn’t thought about it much.”

“As I see it, you have two choices. Either you hand it over and you’re off the hook; or you don’t, in which case you’re always going to be a marked man. Did I miss some nuance you left out?”

“But I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Yeah. I get it. Unfortunately, being innocent hasn’t ever meant going unharmed when you’re dancing with elephants. If they step on you, you’re squished just as badly as the guilty.”

“Why are you harping on this?” Drake asked, annoyed at Spencer’s tone.

“Because I might be able to help with that, too.”

“In what way?”

“I know a few people at the CIA.”

Drake fought to control his outrage. “Damn. I knew it. You’re a plant,” he said as he struggled to stand.

“Whoa, there, Nellie. Why is it always so black and white with you? If I didn’t know better, I’d say you don’t trust me.”

“You just said…”

“I said I know some people. You don’t spend a decade doing what I do for a living without making connections, you know? Someone needs to get across a border, or an agency needs some intel on the latest movements of a drug-trafficking gang, or some friendly rebels need a few cases of grenades without any accountability…it’s an imperfect world, is all I’m saying. So yeah, I have contacts. If you decide you want to hand it over, I could negotiate a deal for you. Sounds like you could name a pretty high price.”

“It’s not about the money.”

“It’s always about the money. Are you kidding? If you’re sitting on something they’ve been looking for that long, you’re in the driver’s seat.”

The fight had gone out of Drake. He sat back down.

“What would you do?”

“Personally? Let’s think it through. If you ditch it somewhere else, once they know the Inca city’s here, they’ll spare no expense on divers, sonar, whatever it takes. And you’ll never be safe, no matter how much money you get from the treasure. Someone, either them or the Russians or someone else, will always think you know more than you’re saying. So it’s just a matter of time till they come for you. You’d be fighting the whole world. I don’t like those odds.”

Drake frowned. “That sounds about right.”

“What’s the downside to handing it over? Uncle Sam gets the ore and builds a death star with it? Guess what. They’ve already got enough nukes to kill everything on the planet a thousand times over. So I highly doubt that’s the end game. Maybe it might have been when Russia was the evil empire, but now? Not so much. So it’s more likely it’s used to develop a power source, assuming Palenko was onto something. Or it could be he was completely off-base, in which case nothing ever gets built. I’m just saying that behind door number two, you have inevitable death, probably painful, and behind door number one, a way out with a potentially big payday.”

“When you put it like that…”

Spencer squinted at him. “You have something against the U.S.?”

“No more than any other government, I suppose.”

“Then what’s the beef?”

Drake thought about it for a while. “I don’t like being told what to do.”

“Right. Join the club. But unless you left something out, they didn’t order you to do anything.”

“That’s right. But it felt like I had no choice.”

“Hey, do what you want, but I kind of like breathing, and I’m sure Allie does too. And the problem I see is that if we’re associated with you, and you decide to bury it in your backyard, the bad guys will be coming for us, too. I didn’t sign up for that. If you’d have come clean before, I would have made turning it over a condition of my help.”

Drake shrugged. “You did miss that we haven’t found anything.”

“Yet. You found the frigging city. Everyone else has been hunting for it for hundreds of years. I’d say that should inspire some confidence. My money’s obviously on you. Besides, if I didn’t…” Spencer’s voice trailed off. Drake had gotten to his feet and wasn’t listening anymore.

Spencer rose too, rifle in hand. “What?” he whispered.

“I think I know where the treasure is,” Drake said, and limped off into the jungle without another word.

Spencer glowered at his back as he disappeared into the brush, and with a groan and a glance at Allie’s tent, followed him, wondering what had just clicked in Drake’s head.

Chapter Forty-One

Drake approached the altar area, his gun in one hand and the staff in the other, and slowly turned to study the topography. The bodies had disappeared, either dragged away by Spencer to avoid attracting larger predators or taken by the jungle’s hungry to be feasted on in private. He limped to the altar and gazed at the stone surface, the blood washed away by the prior night’s rain. On it was a lateral line he’d believed had been a channel for blood, but which now appeared to be pointing across the clearing to a rise in the terrain, a bulge that jutted from the vegetation like a massive tumor.

Spencer edged to his side and followed his stare to settle on the outcropping. “What is it?” he whispered.

“My father speculated in the journal that the Incas wouldn’t have just left their treasure exposed, where it could be easily found. And something about what Palenko said, that it was beneath our feet…”

“You think they buried it? That’ll take forever to locate.”

“Maybe. But what if…come on. Do you have your flashlight?” Drake limped to the rise a hundred yards away, its bulk growing as he neared it. Palm trees dotted its base, their trunks contorted in impossible directions as they sought elusive sunlight.

When they arrived at the bottom of the small hill, the stone reddish brown where it wasn’t covered with creepers and plants, Drake began probing around the base with his staff, thrusting it into the brush like a man possessed.

“What are you doing?” Spencer asked, doubt in his voice.

“Looking for something that doesn’t belong here. That isn’t natural.”

“Sure. Like what?”

“I don’t know, but–”

Drake stopped and thrust the staff again, and heard the same sound.

Something hollow behind the plants.

“Let’s get to work. Still plenty of light out,” Drake said, unsheathing his machete from its place on his backpack frame.

Ten minutes later they’d cleared a six-foot space where they could see the underlying rock. Drake tapped one area with his machete blade and began scratching the dirt from the surface. A crudely built wall emerged, the mortar crumbling as the steel scraped at it, and Spencer joined him working at the joints in the rock – river rock, not the iron-rich ore that formed the outcropping.

After half an hour, the first of the stones fell into an empty space behind the wall, and Spencer renewed his efforts as Drake took a break, still not fully recovered from the prior day’s blood loss. A second rock tumbled into the cavity, followed by a third and fourth, and Spencer stood back, studying the dark hole he’d bored.

“Looks like a cave to me,” he said.

Drake offered a pained grin. “That’s what we’re looking for. How much longer you figure till it gets dark?”

“Maybe two hours.”

“Plenty of time,” Drake said, pulling his flashlight from his pack and turning it on. Spencer did the same and then invited Drake to lead the way.

“This is your dance. I’m just the window dressing.”

Drake’s calf flared pain as he climbed through the gap and stood in the cavern, the mouth no more than six feet high and ten wide. He took several cautious steps, playing his beam over the stone floor, which dropped below ground level as far as he could see. Spencer stepped in behind him. His boots scraped on the chunks of mortar and rock as he directed his light at the ceiling.

“Looks like plenty of bats, so there’s got to be another entrance,” he whispered.

Squeaking greeted his comment, and then the entire cavern seemed to come alive as the air thickened with hundreds of furry bodies beating tiny wings, screeching as they headed for the new exit. Drake ducked and covered his head as the swarm fluttered over and around him. Spencer did the same, the frenzied squeaks building to a crescendo and then fading as the bats departed, leaving them open-mouthed and shaken.

“You did say there were plenty of them,” Drake said dryly. He took a tentative step farther into the chasm’s gloom. Spencer moved to his side, and their combined lights glowed off the cave walls.

“Feel the temperature change? It’s cooler already.”

“At least that’s a relief. I wonder if there are snakes in here?” Drake asked.

“I think we have to assume the worst.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

The area expanded as they traversed the sloping floor. The narrow passage became a large cave with a ceiling at least twenty feet high. Spencer grabbed Drake’s arm and leaned into him, pointing at a far wall, his light moving across the stone.

Pictographs adorned the space, carvings of deities and dignitaries in elaborate gowns and headdresses, riding on carts pulled by jaguars and mythical beasts. In the background, atop a hill framed by two waterfalls, a huge form, part feline, part human, spread its arms heavenward, where an oversized, stylized sun beamed down on the procession.

Drake nudged him and moved forward to where a different scene depicted Inca warriors battling caricatures of bearded men with armor, bodies on both sides piled up, decapitated and otherwise mutilated. His light seemed inadequate to highlight all the carvings, which stretched to the ceiling – a graphical history of the Incas.

“Look at this,” Spencer whispered from another wall. Drake made his way to him, where he was staring at a carving of a large gathering of men and women standing around a lake. A deity hovered over it, arms filled with icons and jewels.

“That could be El Dorado. The legend of the golden man,” Drake said, his voice hushed. He directed his light at the mouth of a dark opening on the far side of the chamber, the squeak of an occasional bat reminding them that they weren’t alone. Water dripped somewhere in the distance, wearing away at the stone as it had for eons to create the cavern. They approached the gap and stopped short at the final image carved into the wall – a grinning skull atop a robed figure, which clutched a snake in one bony hand and a war club in the other.

“Not much of a welcome committee, is it?” Spencer said.

“You can take the point position anytime you want.”

“This is your movie. Lead on, Dr. Livingston.”

Drake moved forward into the new cave and a low moan greeted him from its bowels. His flashlight beam flashed on the floor in front of him, and he hesitated as a large white scorpion faced him, tail raised, its pincers opening and closing furiously, clearly annoyed at having been disturbed. Drake sensed Spencer behind him, but kept his eyes locked on the creature, mesmerized by its menacing dance.

He jumped when Spencer tapped his arm and whispered in his ear.

“Looks like we found the cemetery.”

Drake raised his beam from the creature and slowly played it over the wall, where hundreds of skulls leered at him. Spencer turned slowly, taking in the countless skeletons in the burial vault, and stopped where the oily brown exoskeleton of a centipede was worming through the eyehole of a skull with a feathered helmet on it.

“Okay. This is officially really creepy,” Drake murmured, and returned his attention to the floor, where the scorpion had scuttled off into the recesses of the massive crypt.

“Agreed. Although the good part is that they’re dead, so they don’t pose much of a threat. I could take ten of ’em with one arm tied behind my back,” Spencer said.

The moaning sound echoed through the cave again, and Drake pointed his light at the ceiling. “Wind’s blowing somewhere above us.”

“Probably where the bats get in.”

“You’re going to tell me to keep going, aren’t you?”

“I don’t see any treasure yet, do you?”

“Did I mention this is freaking me out?” Drake asked.

“Not yet.”

“Okay, then I won’t.” Drake touched the hilt of his knife and felt the odd calming effect flood through him as he made his way through the floor-to-ceiling piles of bleached bones. They pushed thick cobwebs aside, the gossamer strands hanging from the stalactites above like ectoplasm. Rows of skulls fixed him with sightless stares as he put one silent foot in front of the other, and he wondered whether the experience would haunt his dreams forever, like the memory of Palenko’s Saint Vitus dance, and the last light of life in Jack’s eyes before he closed them the final time.