The collapsed section of battlement was ahead – but Eddie was only interested in the vines and ivy hanging from the wall a few yards away, the entrance to the lower level all but invisible behind them.
He dived through, rolling and taking up position at the squat opening. His passage had ripped away some of the creepers – if Stikes spotted the gap and guessed his plan, a few bullets fired through the green curtain would end it instantly.
Footsteps. Stikes had reached the corner. They got closer.
Slowed.
Eddie peered through the leaves. Stikes drew nearer, moving at a cautious walking pace. Eddie tensed, waiting for the best moment to attack – or run. Had Stikes seen the archway, or. . .
The mercenary went past. He hadn’t spotted the entrance, instead heading for the doorway of a nearby ruined building. But it would only take him a second to see that there was nobody inside—
Eddie burst out through the vines.
Stikes spun at the crackle of branches – and Eddie slammed him against a wall. He fired, muzzle flame scorching the sleeve of Eddie’s leather jacket. Eddie responded by grabbing his wrist and smashing it against the edge of a stone block. Stikes barely held in a grunt of pain as the gun was jolted from his grasp. Eddie shoulder-barged him against the wall, then reached for the fallen Jericho—
Stikes whipped up one knee, catching him in the side and making him stumble. He twisted away from Eddie, then lunged, trying to catch him in a headlock.
Eddie lashed out with a foot, catching his kneecap. Stikes grunted again, reeling – then let out a full-blown groan as Eddie drove a solid punch into his stomach. The Yorkshireman pressed home the attack, delivering another blow to his midsection before landing an uppercut on his jaw. Stikes fell against the wall, blood round his mouth. ‘Always knew you were just a fucking Rupert!’ Eddie snarled: army slang for a useless upperclass officer. He pulled back his fist for a knockout blow. ‘Can’t win in a proper fight—’
Two of Callas’s men ran round the corner, raising their AK-103s—
Eddie hauled Stikes away from the wall and shoved him back at the two soldiers. In the confines of the alley they couldn’t fire without hitting him, giving Eddie the chance to sprint in the other direction.
Stikes shook off his dizziness. ‘What are you waiting for?’ he shouted in Spanish, moving aside to give them a clear shot. ‘Shoot him!’
They opened fire – just as Eddie reached the collapsed wall and made a running jump into the jungle beyond.
He was over forty feet above the ground, nothing to stop his fall except the branches of a nearby tree. Leaves smacked at his face as he arced through the foliage, arms thrown wide . . .
He hit the damp wood hard, a bough thumping against his chest. Winded, he grabbed it. There was a sudden explosion of movement around him – dozens of small, brightly coloured birds in the tree took to the air in alarm, shrilling and chittering. The branch bounced as if trying to shake him off, but he kept his hold.
He looked for a way to the ground – but the tree chose one for him. The branch snapped. Eddie dropped – and was caught in a knot of creepers, swinging at the trunk.
He braced himself—
Smaller branches absorbed some of the impact, but they also ripped through his clothes, cutting him in several places. He jerked his head sideways just in time to avoid being blinded by one stub, the wood slashing a line across his cheek.
Crackles from above. The creepers were tearing apart. He tried to find a secure handhold, but the branches he clutched all broke under his weight.
He fell again – and hit a twist in the crooked trunk, bouncing off and landing in the overgrown marsh with a thick splash. Despite the pain, he crawled back towards the tree, pushing through the undergrowth.
Above, the two soldiers reached the broken wall and looked into the jungle. Birds whirled madly through the branches, leaves dropping like green snowflakes from the still shaking tree. No sign of the escaped prisoner.
Stikes pushed them aside. ‘Give me that!’ he barked, snatching the AK from one of the men. He aimed it into the tree, seeing no sign of his former subordinate, then down at the ground.
Movement in the bushes—
Stikes opened fire as Eddie scrambled for cover. Bullets thunked into the tree, bark and splinters spitting from each impact. But his target was now hunched against the other side of the trunk, shielded by over two feet of wood. Stikes fired the last rounds in the magazine, then irritably thrust the AK into its owner’s hands. ‘Get back to Callas.’
The other soldier still had his weapon fixed on the tree. ‘We can climb down and get him.’
‘No,’ Stikes said. ‘We need to get the sun disc out of here. Come on.’ He headed back down the alley, retrieving his Jericho. The soldiers followed.
Eddie sat breathlessly behind the tree, wondering if his pursuers had their weapons trained on his hiding place, waiting for him to emerge. After a minute, he risked a peek. Nobody above. They had gone.
Aching, he stood, trying to work out the quickest way to get back into the ruins. Scaling the cliff was out; from here, he would have to go almost halfway round the entire perimeter. He limped away, hearing the rumble of the helicopter drawing closer to the lost city.
‘Did you kill him?’ Callas called as Stikes and the soldiers returned to the plaza.
‘No. He got away,’ the Englishman replied.
‘You let him escape?’
‘He won’t go far, not as long as we have them.’ Stikes gestured at the prisoners, who apart from the wounded Becker had been forced back to work. ‘He’ll try to rescue them. I’d advise that we leave before then.’
A faintly dismissive sneer crossed Callas’s lips. ‘You’re afraid of him?’
‘Not in the slightest,’ Stikes snapped, wiping the blood from his mouth. ‘But if we leave him behind, there are only two towns he can reach from here – and you can have men waiting for him at both.’ He regarded the blood-spattered sun disc, which had been lifted back upright on the cart. ‘How long before the chopper can pick it up?’
‘A few minutes.’
‘Good. Send two men to guard the trucks – he might try to hijack or sabotage them. The rest, tell them to help load the sun disc as quickly as they can. The moment it leaves the ground, we’ll evacuate.’
The Venezuelan stiffened slightly at being given orders by his employee, but nevertheless called out instructions. Two of his men ran for the main gate, the others doing what they could to speed the golden disc’s laborious progress. Before long, it reached the waiting crate; a few more minutes of straining, and it was safely in the container. By now, the Mil was hovering directly over the clearing, lowering cables. Soldiers attached the steel lines to the crate as the others forced the prisoners back at gunpoint. Another minute, and a man signalled to Callas that it was ready.
‘Take it up!’ the general shouted impatiently, waving to the helicopter.
The Mi-17 increased power to full, engines screaming as they took the extra load. The crate lurched from the ground. For a moment it seemed as though it would get no higher, swaying pendulously a few inches above the flagstones; then it slowly began to rise.
Callas watched in satisfaction as the helicopter lifted its precious cargo higher. The crate cleared the trees, then the Mil turned lethargically northwest, heading for the military base. Aircraft and cargo disappeared from view behind the jungle canopy.
It was now Stikes’s turn to be impatient. ‘Time to go,’ he said. His gaze fell on the prisoners. ‘What about them?’
‘We take them with us,’ said Callas. ‘I don’t want anyone to know we were here.’
‘All the bullet holes you’ve left in the place might give it away,’ Nina said scathingly. ‘And all the gear you’ve left behind - as well as Flat Stanley there.’ She nodded towards the gory spot where the luckless soldier had been squashed beneath the sun disc.
‘I will send more men to collect them later,’ the general replied as he started for the gate, signalling his men to bring the explorers. Becker was half carried, half dragged by two soldiers. ‘And a bullet hole is a bullet hole. Anyone could have made them at any time. But the bodies of archaeologists known to be in the country on a particular date . . . that would be harder to explain if they were found here.’ A sadistic hardness entered his voice. ‘But where you are going, you will never be found.’
Despite her outward defiance, a chill of fear ran through Nina’s soul.
Eddie climbed back up the outer wall where he had first entered the city, warily surveying the buildings below before scrambling down the ruined stairway and heading for the plaza. He was on full alert, certain that Callas’s men would be searching for him - which made the absence of any guards all the more disconcerting as he crept through the alleys.
He peered over a wall at the plaza. Nobody was there. The soldiers, Callas and Stikes were gone. So were Nina and the other expedition members.
And the sun disc.
Callas had what he came for – the golden god-image had been taken away by the helicopter. He vaulted the wall and hurried across the plaza. Tracks in the dirt led to the main gate - and the smaller prints of women’s boots amongst them showed that Nina, Macy and Loretta were still alive. Callas presumably had some reason for not wanting their bodies to be found at Paititi, but Eddie was certain that he still intended to kill them. He would be taking them somewhere he could be sure they wouldn’t be found. Where?
The military base. A restricted area in the depths of the jungle, what few visitors it might get deterred by barbed wire and bullets. Once Nina and the others entered, they would never leave.
He ran for the gate. As he cleared the ancient walls, he heard something over the noise of birds and insects: a low grumble. Engines.
Receding. The trucks were already heading away down the logging track.
‘Shit!’ He stopped, forcing back his anger, trying to think. There was only one road, and it took a long and circuitous route back to Valverde and the spur leading to the base. It would take a couple of hours for Callas’s convoy to get there. The base itself was about five miles to the northwest . . .
Eddie already knew there was only one course of action he could take.
He raised his wrist, turning in place until the hour hand of his watch pointed at the sun. South, he knew from his military training, was exactly halfway between the hour hand and the twelve o’clock position on the watch face. With that established, it only took a moment to work out which way was northwest. One last look after the vehicles carrying his wife and friends, then he set off at a run into the trees.
14
T
he bumpy drive from the ruins took two hours, Nina and the others sweating in the back of the troop truck. Ahead and behind it were the Land Cruisers. Kit and Valero looked after Becker, while Macy tried, with limited success, to comfort the weeping, terrified Loretta. Nina’s fleeting thoughts of leaping over the tailgate to escape into the jungle were tempered by the AK-103s pointed at her companions – and the presence of Cuff’s body. Loretta’s hysteria at the sight had forced the soldiers to cover it, but the huddled shape was a constant reminder of Callas’s ruthlessness.
She knew he would display that trait again soon enough. The general’s greed had convinced him to keep her alive – for the moment – in the hope she could lead him to even greater riches . . . but he had no cause to spare the others. They had witnessed his plundering of Paititi, something he wanted to keep secret even after successfully completing his ‘operation’.
They would have to be silenced.
The little convoy turned off the road to Valverde on to a narrower, even rougher track. A warning sign read
Prohibida La Entrada: Zona Militar
. Callas’s domain, a private kingdom. Here, he could do whatever he wanted to his prisoners, and nobody would ever know.
The truck slowed. Nina looked ahead, seeing a chain-link fence topped with coils of razor wire stretching into the vine-draped trees to each side. A soldier opened a gate to let the vehicles through. They rumbled on for a short way before emerging in a large rectangular space bulldozed out of the jungle.
The military base.
The Mi-17 was parked on a concrete helipad, being refuelled. The crate containing the Inca treasure rested beside it. At the facility’s heart was a giant rectangular radar antenna, aimed towards the Colombian border. The rest of the base was less imposing: an assortment of prefabricated control and administration huts, and tents for the troops luckless enough to be stationed in the sweltering green hell.
The lead Land Cruiser stopped beside the helipad, Callas getting out to check the crate. The other two vehicles pulled up behind it. Stikes emerged from the second Toyota and strolled to the truck. ‘Everyone comfortable in there?’ he asked mockingly.
‘For God’s sake,’ said Nina, indicating Becker’s injured leg, ‘he needs a doctor.’
‘At least give him something for the pain,’ Kit added.