Temple (13 page)

Aside from the citadel, there was one other dominant feature of the
village.
The town of Vilcafor was surrounded by a huge dried-up moat—an
enormous horseshoe-shaped ditch that ran around the entire town,
starting at the riverbank and ending at the riverbank. Two great
stone dikes prevented the water in the river from rushing into the
moat.
It must have been at least fifteen feet across and just as
deep. Tangled thorny thickets of brush snaked their way along its
waterless base. Two old wooden log-bridges spanned its width on
either side of the village. Like the rest of the town, they too had
been overcome by the encroaching rainforest. Their wooden beams
were laced with sprawling green vines.
Race stood motionless at the end of the old Incan street,
the pouring rain running off the brim of his cap.
He felt like he was entering another world.
An ancient world.
A dangerous world.
'Don't stay near the water too long,' Lauren said as she strode
past him.
Race turned, not understanding. Lauren clicked on her flashlight
and pointed it at the river behind him.
It was as if someone had just flicked on a light switch.
Race saw them instantly. Glinting in the light of Lauren's
flashlight.
Eyes.
No less than fifty pairs of eyes, protruding from the inky
black water, stared back at him from the rain-spattered surface of
the river.
He turned quickly to Lauren. 'Alligators?'
'No,” Walter Chambers said, coming over. “Melanosuchus niger. Black
caimans. Largest crocodilian on the continent.
Some sa the largest in the world. They're bigger than any
alligator, and in biology more like a crocodile. In fact, the black
caiman is a close relative of Crocodylus porosus, the ant
Australian saltwater crocodile.'
'How big are they?' Race asked. He could only see the eerie
constellation of eyes before him. He couldn't tell how big the
reptiles in the water actually were.
'About twenty-two feet,' Chambers said cheerfully.
'Twenty-two feet.' Race did the calculations in his head.
Twenty-two feet equalled seven metres.
'How much do they weigh?' he asked.
'About 2300 pounds. What's that, about a thousand kilograms.'
A thousand kilograms, Race thought. A metric ton.
Wonderful.
The caimans in the darkened river began to rise in the water and
Race saw their armoured crocodilian backs, saw the pointed plates
of their tails.
They looked like dark mounds just hovering in the water.
Great big massive mounds.
'They're not going to come out of the water, are they?'
'They might,' Chambers said. 'But probably not. Most crocodilians
prefer to grab their victims by surprise at the water's edge, from
the cover of the water itself. And although black caimans are night
hunters, they rarely stray out of the water in the evening, for the
simple reason that it's too cold. Like all reptiles they have to
watch their body temperature.'
Race stepped away from the water's edge.
'Black caimans,' he said. JGreat.'
Frank Nash stood at the end of the main street of Vilcafor with his
arms folded across his chest, alone. He just stared intently at the
decrepit old village before him.
Troy Copeland appeared at his side. 'Sebastian just called
from Cuzco. Romano just went through the airport there. He arrived
in a Globemaster under Tomcat escort. He then
liaised with a few choppers and headed off in this
direction.'
'What sort of choppers?”
'Super Stallions. Three of them.'
'Christ,' Nash said. A fully-loaded CH-53E Super Stallion could
carry up to 55 fully-armed troops. And they had three of them. So,
Romano had brought firepower, too.
'How long did it take us to get here from Cuzco?' Nash asked
quickly.
'About two hours and forty minutes,' Copeland said.
Nash looked at his watch.
It was 7:45 pm.
'They'll be quicker in Stallions,' he said, '/f they follow the
totems correctly. We have to move fast. I'd say we've got about two
hours before they get here.'
The six Green Berets began hauling the Samsonite trunks out of the
choppers and onto the main street of Vilcafor.
Nash, Lauren and Copeland started opening them up at once,
revealing a cache of high-tech equipment inside— Hexium laptop
computers, infra-red telescopic lenses and some very
futuristic-looking stainless-steel canisters.
The two academics, Chambers and Lopez, were off in the village
proper, eagerly examining the citadel and its sur rounding
structures.
Race—-now cloaked in a green Army parka to protect him against the
rain—went over to help the Green Berets unload the choppers.
He got to the riverbank to find Buzz Cochrane addressing the
youngest member of their team, a fresh-faced corporal named Douglas
Kennedy. Sergeant Van Lewen and the Green Berets' leader, Captain
Scott, were nowhere to be seen.
'I mean, honestly, Doogie, could she be any more out of your
league?' Cochrane was saying.
'I don't know about that, Buzz,' one of the other com mandos said.
'I reckon he should ask her out.'
'What a great idea,“ Cochrane said, turning to Kennedy.
'Shut up, you guys,' Doug Kennedy said in a broad Southern
accent.
'No, seriously, Doogs, why don't you just walk on up to her and ask
her out?'
'I said, shut up,' Kennedy said as he heaved a Samsonite container
out of one of the Hueys.
Douglas Kennedy was twenty-three, lean, and handsome in a boyish
kind of way, with earnest green eyes and fully shaved head. He was
also about as green as they came. His nickname 'Doogie' was a
reference to the clean-cut and hon est nature of the lead character
in the old TV show, Doogie Howser MD, with whom it was said Doogie
shared many characteristics. It was also a “clumsy' kind of name,
sug gesting some sort of innocence, which made it all the more
appropriate for Doogie. He was particularly shy—and espe cially
clumsymwhen it came to women.
'What's going on?' Race said as he arrived next to them.
Cochrane turned—looked Race up and down instantly— then turned away
as he said, “Oh, we just caught Doogie here staring at that pretty
young archaeologist over there, and we was just giving him a
friendly ribbing.'
Race spun and saw Gaby Lopez, the team's archaeolo gist, standing
over by the citadel with Walter Chambers.
She was certainly very pretty. She had dark hair, a beau tiful
Latin complexion and a compact curvaceous body. At twenty-seven, so
Race had heard, she was the youngest Associate Professor in the
Department of Archaeology at Princeton. Gaby Lopez was a very
intelligent young woman.
Race shrugged inwardly. Doogie Kennedy could do a lot worse.
Cochrane slapped Doogie heartily hard on the back, spat out a gob
of tobacco.
'Don't you worry, son. We'll make a man out of you yet.
I mean, take a look at young Chucky over there,' Cochrane said,
indicating the next-youngest member of the unit, a beefy moon-faced
23-year-old corporal named Charles
125
'Chucky' Wilson. 'Why, only last week Chucky became a fully fledged
member of the 80s Club.”
'What's the 80s Club?' Doogie asked, perplexed.
'It's tasty, that's what it is,' Cochrane said, licking his
lips.
'Ain't that right, Chucky?'
'Sure is, Buzz.'
'Apples, man,' Cochrane grinned.
'Apples,' Chucky replied, smiling.
As the two soldiers laughed, Race eyed Cochrane cau tiously,
mindful of what the Green Beret had said on the plane when he had
thought Race was out of earshot.
Corporal Buzz Cochrane appeared to be in his late thir ties. He had
red hair and eyebrows, a thickly creased face and a rough unshaven
chin. He was also a big man—bulky across the chest—with thick,
powerful arms.
Just from the look of him, Race didn't like him.
There just seemed to be something mean-spirited about him—the
not-so-intelligent school bully who by the sheer virtue of his size
had had it over the other kids. The kind of brute who had joined
the Army because it was a place where people like him thrived. It
was no wonder he was almost forty and still a corporal.
'Say, Doogie,' Cochrane said suddenly, 'what do you say I go over
there and tell that cute little archaeologist that we got ourselves
a dumb young soldier over here who'd like to ask her out for a
burger and a movie—'
“No!” Doogie exclaimed, genuinely alarmed.
The other Green Berets burst out laughing.
Doogie went red in the face of their laughter.
'And don't call me dumb,' he muttered. 'I ain't dumb.'
Just then, Van Lewen and Scott returned from the other chopper. The
soldiers' laughter stopped immediately.
Race saw Van Lewen look warily from Doogie to the others, in the
way a big brother would glare at his little brother's tormentors.
He got the impression that it was more because of Van Lewen's
presence than Captain Scott's that the laughter had ceased.
'How're things progressing here?' Scott said to Cochrane.
'Not a problem in the world, sir,' Cochrane said.
'Then grab your gear and head on into the village,' Scott said.
'They're about to do the test.“
Race and the soldiers came into the village proper. It was still
pouring with rain.
As he walked down the muddy street, Race saw Lauren standing with
Troy Copeland over by the largest of all the Samsonite
trunks.
It was a great big black case, at least five feet tall, and
Copeland was unfolding its side panels, transforming it into a
portable workbench of some sort.
The lean scientist flipped open the lid of the trunk, revealing a
waist-high console made up of some dials, a keyboard and a computer
screen. Beside him, Lauren was attaching a silver rod-like object
that looked like a boom
microphone onto the top of the console.
'Ready?' Lauren asked.
'Ready,' Copeland said.
Lauren flicked a switch on the side of the Samsonite trunk and
instantly green and red lights lit up all over the console.
Copeland immediately set to work typing on the unit's all- weather
keyboard.
'It's called a nucleotide resonance imager, or NRI,' Lau- ten told
Race before he could ask. 'It can tell us the location of any
nuclear substance in the surrounding area by measuring the
resonance in the air around that substance.'
“Say what?' Race said.
Lauren sighed and then said, 'Any radioactive sub- stance—be it
uranium, plutonium or thyrium—reacts with oxygen at a molecular
level. Basically, the radioactive substance causes the air around
it to vibrate, or resonate. This device detects that resonance in
the air, and hence gives us the location of the radioactive
substance.'
A moment later, Copeland finished typing. He turned to Nash. 'NRI's
ready.'
'Do it,' Nash said.
Copeland hit a key on the keyboard and immediately the silver rod
mounted on top of the machine began to rotate. It moved slowly, in
a steady, measured circle.
As it did so, Race looked about himself and noticed that Lopez and
Chambers had returned from their exploring.
Now they were staring intently at the machine. Race looked at the
rest of the team around him—-everyone was staring
intently at the nucleotide resonance imager.
And then suddenly it dawned on him.
This was what everything depended on.
If the imager didn't detect the idol somewhere in the immediate
vicinity, then they had all wasted their time com ing here—
The rod on top of the imager stopped turning.
'We have a reading,' Lauren said suddenly, her eyes locked on the
console's screen.
Race saw Nash let out the breath he'd been holding.
'Where?'
'One second…' Lauren typed something on the keyboard.
The rod on the imager was now pointing upriver— toward the
mountains—toward the area where the trees of the rainforest met the
sheer face of the nearest rocky plateau.
Lauren said, 'The signal's weak because the angle's not
right. But I'm picking up something. Let me see if I can adjust •
the vector some…'
She hit some more keys and the rod on top of the unit slowly began
to tilt upwards. It had reached an angle of about thirty degrees
when suddenly Lauren's eyes lit up.
'All right,' she said. 'Strong signal. Very high frequency
resonance. Bearing 270 degrees—due west. Vertical angle is 29
degrees, 58 minutes. Range… 793 metres.'
Lauren looked up at the dark rocky mountain face that rose above
the trees to the west. It looked like a plateau of some sort.
Slanting sheets of rain whipped across its face.
'It's somewhere in there,' she said. 'Somewhere up in the
mountains.
Nash turned to Scott. 'Get on the radio to Panama. Tell
them that the preliminary team has verified the existence of the
substance. But also say that we have intel on hostile forces en
route to our location as we speak. Tell them to send in a full
protective force for extraction as soon as they can.'
Nash spun to face the rest of the assembled group. 'All right,
folks, saddle up. Let's go get that idol.'
Everyone started getting ready.
The Green Berets readied their M-16s. The DARPA scien tists grabbed
compasses and various computer equipment to take with them.
Race saw Lauren and Troy Copeland head inside one of the Hueys,
presumably to grab some gear of their own. He hurried after them to
see if he could help—and while he was at it, maybe also to ask
Lauren what Nash had meant when he'd said that hostile forces were
on their way to Vilcafor.
'Hey—' Race said as he arrived in the doorway of the chopper.
'Oh…'
He'd caught the two of them in a clinch—kissing like a pair of
teenagers—hands through each other's hair, tongues in each other's
mouths. Hot to trot.
Upon Race's unexpected arrival, the two scientists sepa rated
instantly. Lauren blushed. Copeland scowled.
'I'm… really sorry,.' Race said. 'I didn't mean to'
'It's okay,' Lauren said, pushing her hair back into place.
'This is just a very exciting moment for us.'
Race nodded, turned away, headed back into the village.
Obviously.
What he couldn't help thinking about, however, as he walked back to
join the others in the village, was the image of Lauren running her
fingers through Copeland's hair as she kissed him. He had seen her
wedding ring clearly.
Copeland, on the other hand, hadn't been wearing one.
The group walked along the remains of a muddy path that ran along
the edge of the riverbank. They were heading toward the base of the
rocky mountain-plateau, the sounds of the night-time forest loud in
their ears. The sea of leaves around them rippled under the weight
of the steady rain.