‘Not gonna . . . help you,’ Nina croaked, head lolling.
‘We both know that you will. But,’ he said, going to the case, ‘I have work to do first. No point making retirement plans until I have the money to pay for them.’
Nina blinked away the tears, focus returning as Stikes returned the statuette to its foam bed. He put the bag containing the khipu on top of the three figures and closed the case.
The khipu
. . .
Osterhagen had said the collections of knotted strings were valuable; not so much for their intrinsic worth as their rarity. But what had Cuff called them?
Talking knots
. A unique form of record-keeping. The Incas had no written language, but they did have numbers.
Numbers.
Distances. Directions. Any journey could be reduced to a series of numbers, as long as you knew the system—
A new tightness pulled at her chest, but this time not because of the poison. It was an adrenalin surge, sudden excitement as she realised what the knots were silently telling her. Not a
series
of numbers. A
string
. In this case, a literal one. The khipu was somehow the key to understanding the map, its markings connected to the dozens of cords.
Stikes had her, and the statuettes, but he didn’t have a source of earth energy. The effect at Paititi had been so feeble it had only provided the vaguest indication of the final statue piece’s location.
But with the khipu and the painted account of the Incas’ last journey, she wouldn’t need the statues. She would have a map.
She stayed silent, trying not to let the unexpected elation of discovery show on her face. Stikes still had the scorpion, still had another dose of antivenom he could use to take her to the agonising edge of death if he thought she was concealing information. He looked down at her, cold blue eyes piercing her soul. Had he realised that she had worked out more?
No. He turned away and opened the door, summoning the two soldiers back in. They untied her and hauled her back through the cellars.
‘Nina,’ said Kit as she was dumped, rubber-legged, in her cell. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Super fine,’ she moaned. The antivenom may have worked, but she still felt numb and nauseous, the sting on her arm an angry red lump.
‘What did they do to you?’
‘Your turn to find out,’ said Stikes. The soldiers opened his cell. No attempts to grapple the prisoner here; one of the men simply drove a punch into Kit’s stomach, doubling him over.
‘You bastards,’ said Nina, but she was too weak even to raise a hand in protest as Kit was dragged from the cage. ‘He’s not an archaeologist, he can’t tell you anything about El Dorado.’
Stikes held up a hand. The soldiers stopped. ‘Maybe not,’ said the Englishman, ‘but there’s something else he can tell me.’ He leaned closer to the Interpol agent, examining him with unblinking intensity. ‘Why are you here, Mr Jindal?’
‘Smuggling . . . case,’ Kit groaned.
‘No, why are you
really
here?’ A silent moment as the two men locked eyes. Then Stikes clicked his fingers. ‘You’ll tell me very soon,’ he said as the soldiers hustled Kit away.
‘What do you mean, why is he really here?’ Nina demanded. But Stikes simply gave her a disdainful look before slamming the door behind him.
18
T
he jungle rolled below, mile after mile of endless green. The Cessna was heading almost due north towards Caracas, detouring slightly to avoid the peaks of the Serrania Mapiche mountains. The sun dropped towards the horizon, casting a golden hue over the landscape. The explorers had left Valverde less than an hour ago, so were not even halfway to their destination, and it would be dark in around forty minutes.
‘Is landing at night going to be a problem?’ Eddie, in the copilot’s seat, asked Valero. ‘Without a radio, I mean.’
‘Don’t worry,’ the Venezuelan replied. ‘I can do it.’
‘Great.’ He looked down the cabin. ‘How’s Ralf?’
‘Asleep,’ said Macy. She and Osterhagen were taking it in turns to watch the injured man, having used the plane’s first aid kit to clean and bandage his gunshot wound. There was a good chance he would recover if he reached a hospital.
‘What about you?’
She grinned half-heartedly. ‘Oh, just kinda wishing I’d worked harder in school so I could have done a medical degree like my parents instead of archaeology. You get shot at less that way. Even in Miami.’
Eddie smiled, then examined a navigation chart. Valero had earlier pointed out a landmark: Cerro Autana, a great flat-topped mountain, standing alone on the jungle plain. The bizarre tower was now many miles behind them, so before long they would pass about ten miles east of the city of Puerto Ayacucho.
He noticed something else. Puerto Ayacucho, as a regional capital, had a fairly large airport . . . but it was also marked as a military facility. ‘Is this an airbase?’ he asked, pointing at the map.
‘Si,’
Valero replied. ‘That is why we are going to Caracas. I didn’t want to land in the middle of Callas’s friends.’
It made sense, but Eddie was suddenly on edge. An airbase so close to the border would serve a strategic purpose, its planes patrolling the edge of Venezuelan airspace . . .
And intercepting intruders.
‘Where are the binocs?’ he demanded.
Macy found them, concerned by his change of tone. ‘What is it?’
‘If Callas has friends in the air force, we don’t need to land to meet them. They can come to us!’ He looked northwest through the binoculars, following the long sparkling line of the Orinoco until he spotted the greys and browns of civilisation. The airport was south of the city.
Even from this distance, it was easy to make out a couple of parked airliners. He was searching for something smaller, however. He panned away from the civilian terminal to a cluster of hangars and support buildings. Their drab functionality told him at a glance that this was the military facility.
Something was moving in the rippling heat. Camouflage paintwork: a fighter jet, rolling towards the runway.
It could have been a coincidence, the plane about to set out on a routine patrol . . . but he wasn’t about to bet his life on it. ‘Oscar – take us down as low as you can, and head away from the city. Quick!’
‘Why?’
‘’Cause if you don’t, we’ll be going down in flames! They’re sending a fighter after us.’
Shocked, Valero banked right and put the Cessna into a steep descent. Macy pulled her seatbelt tighter. ‘Okay, I don’t know much about planes, but aren’t we at kind of a horrible disadvantage in this thing?’ She gestured towards the propeller.
‘That’s why we’re trying to stay under their radar,’ Eddie told her. ‘Most of it’ll be pointing west, towards Colombia. We might have a chance.’ Valero’s expression, however, suggested it would be very small.
Macy saw their shared look. ‘Oh, great! After everything we’ve been through, we’re going to be blown up by the Venezuelan Maverick and Iceman?’
‘We’re not going to be blown up,’ Eddie growled. He raised the binoculars again.
Perspective flattened the runway against the landscape as the plane descended. Where was the jet? He couldn’t see it. Lost in the heat distortion, or—
It was already in the air, a dark dart pulling up sharply atop a cone of flame from its afterburner. Its silhouette triggered his memory of aircraft recognition training: a Mirage 5, a French-built, delta-winged fighter. Some versions lacked radar . . . but not, he remembered, the Venezuelan variant.
It would find them. Soon. ‘Buggeration,’ he muttered.
‘Oh boy,’ Macy gulped. ‘Not good?’
‘Not good.’
‘Shit shit
shit
, why didn’t I pay attention in biology class?’
The jet levelled out, afterburner flame disappearing – and turned in their direction. ‘Oscar,’ said Eddie, ‘I don’t have a fucking clue how, but we’re only going to stay alive if you can lose it.’
Valero shot him a disbelieving look. ‘I don’t have a fucking clue how either!’ He eased out of the dive, the Cessna only metres above the rainforest canopy.
Macy pointed. ‘There’s a river. Maybe we could fly along it, behind the trees.’
Again, Valero’s face revealed what he thought of the odds of success, but nevertheless he turned the plane to follow the river, easing back the throttle to give himself more time to react to the waterway’s turns as he dropped lower.
The high trees along the bank blocked Eddie’s view of the Mirage. He felt a moment of hope. If they couldn’t see it, it couldn’t see them – and the fighter’s radar would also struggle to detect them through the trees.
But all the pilot had to do to find them was head for the river and look down to spot the white cross of the Caravan.
Valero made another turn. Eddie kept watching the sky. The high wing, which had made the Caravan the ideal choice for surveying the ground, now blotted out part of his view. How long before the jet reached them? The Mirage was a supersonic fighter, but even at subsonic speeds it could cover the distance in under two minutes—
Osterhagen made a startled noise as the wingtip thwacked a branch. Eddie winced, but there was no damage beyond a green stain on the paintwork.
Valero slowed the Cessna still further, holding it just above stalling speed. Even so, the plane was still tearing through the jungle at over seventy miles per hour. The river weaved, the rainforest rising on each side like green walls.
Walls that were closing in.
‘There is not enough room,’ Valero said urgently.
Eddie was still scouring the sky. ‘Stay low as long as you can. If it goes past us, we might have a chance—’
‘I can see it!’ Macy cried.
‘Is it going past us?’
Her voice was simultaneously angry and terrified. ‘Whadda
you
think?’
‘Oscar,
climb
!’ Eddie roared. Stealth was now worthless; they needed room to manoeuvre. ‘Macy, what’s he doing?’
‘Coming right at us!’ she shrieked over the engine’s howl as Valero pulled up sharply.
Eddie finally saw the Mirage again, sunlight flaring off its cockpit canopy. It was approaching head-on. The Caravan would be fixed in its gunsight, the slow-moving aircraft an easy target—
Twin flashes of fire beneath the fighter’s fuselage. Glowing orange dots seemed to drift towards him, but he knew all too well that the cannon fire’s apparent laziness was just an illusion. ‘He’s firing!’ he yelled.
Valero responded, flinging the Cessna into a hard rolling turn. Loose items bounced around the cabin. A loud crack came from the roof as an aluminium panel split under the stress. Eddie lost sight of the Mirage, but knew the shells were still incoming—
Bright streaks flashed past the windows like meteors. ‘He missed!’ cried Osterhagen.
‘Let’s hope he keeps missing!’ Eddie strained to hold himself upright as the Cessna wheeled round. The Mirage came back into view. Closer. The guns flared again.
‘Oscar!’
Valero changed course again, climbing . . .
Too late. Some shells seared past – but others hit home. Two fist-sized holes exploded through the starboard wing. Macy screamed as a piece of shrapnel scarred the window beside her.
Valero struggled with the controls. ‘Can you keep it in the air?’ asked Eddie, trying to see the damage. Something was coming from the wing. Smoke?
No. A red liquid, sparkling in the light of the falling sun.
Fuel.
The Venezuelan saw it too. He cursed in Spanish, eyes flicking over the instruments. ‘I can’t stop the leak.’ The wing tank had been punctured top and bottom by the cannon shells; no way to shut off the flow.
‘The plane!’
Macy cried, instinctively ducking. Eddie saw a flash of camouflage green and brown rushing at them—
The Mirage blasted overhead with an earsplitting scream, the Cessna crashing violently through its wake. The jet had come in too fast, unable to slow enough to match the weaving transport’s speed. Instead, it ignited its afterburner with another sky-shaking roar and powered into the distance.
Eyes wide, Osterhagen watched it thunder away. ‘He’s leaving,’ he gasped.
‘No, he’s not,’ Eddie replied grimly. The Mirage was making a long, sweeping turn, the pilot about to swing back round . . . and fire a missile. ‘Can we get to Caracas without that fuel tank?’ Valero shook his head. ‘Shit! How much fuel’s still in it?’
Valero checked a gauge, the needle of which was slowly but steadily dropping. ‘Four hundred litres, and falling.’
Eddie thought for a moment, tracking the distant Mirage as it turned. ‘Head away from him, and take us up,’ he ordered.
Valero stared at him, confused. ‘What?’
‘Up, take us up – we need all the height we can get!’ He unfastened his seatbelt as Valero put the Cessna into a climb, heading northwest.