Authors: Pamela Hegarty
She yanked him up. “Come on. The thugs are in the water. Let’s go back for those stones.”
He was bent over, heaving in breaths. “I got them,” he said.
“
The diamond and sapphire,” she said, “in Contreras’s briefcase. Not the five stones we had. I figured you must have switched packs and still have those.”
That made him catch his breath. “That obvious? I’m glad Contreras isn’t as smart as you.”
“
He just doesn’t know you like I do.”
He pointed at her. “I knew I’d get you to like me.”
“
I’ll like you even better when we have the diamond and sapphire.”
“
Promise?”
“
Sure, I promise.” She tugged on his arm. “Let’s get to the yacht before those thugs.”
He sloughed the pack off his shoulder, unzipped the main compartment. The linen napkin was moist, but little water had seeped into the pack. He placed the napkin on his palm, and opened it, showing her the Kohinoor Diamond and Edward’s Sapphire. “What we got,” he said, “is real. And I will never give that up without a fight.”
DAY
5
CHAPTER
63
Christa clenched onto the armrests and the remnants of breakfast roiling her stomach as she peered out the Blackhawk helicopter window. Gusts buffeted the chopper like a cat with a toy. It skimmed above a rainforest canopy so dense it formed a second layer of Earth. No wonder some of the tribes of western Colombia still lived in isolation. To penetrate that canopy was to cross into a different world. The treetops shook with anger, raising fists of green that threatened to swat down and swallow up any human invaders. It was a good thing that, like Braydon, she caught a few hours of dead sleep on the overnight flight from San Francisco to Bogota. The adrenaline that shot through her system with each downdraft wasn’t about to let her rest here. She had just hours to find the temple, restore the Breastplate and return with the antidote plant from the hidden canyon.
From the pilot seat in front of her, Donohue’s voice crackled over her headset. “Radar shows squalls coming in fast,” he said. “Once our skids hit the ground, we got a ten-minute countdown before we head out. Make it count.”
“
We can’t see them,” Braydon said. He sat next to her, his eyes focused intently on the rainforest below. “But they sure as hell can see us.”
He was right, if the guerillas were down there. Typical military thinking, outfitting everyone and everything in camouflage, for all the good it would do. Even the chopper was painted in camouflage greens and browns, a Blackhawk in service in the war on drugs, now commandeered by Donohue from a local contact in the CIA. It was big and powerful enough to hold a dozen men and their weapons. But even with the intermittent thunder and howls of wind, anybody on the ground would see and hear it coming.
In addition to the camouflage fatigues from the cap to the heavy tread army boot, Braydon carried a hefty sidearm on his right hip, a knife that Rambo would envy on his left. She had been coerced into carrying a more manageable .22 pistol in a hip holster, and what Donohue had termed a pilot’s survival knife, a five-inch non-glare blade with a sawtooth edge on one side for cutting branches. The weapons, like the camouflage, only gave the illusion of self protection.
Donohue’s spotty transmission crackled through her headset. “The storm is screwing with the radio, but we’re still picking up Hunter’s homing beacon.”
Christa pressed her hand against Donohue’s seat back to balance against a nasty knock of wind. Braydon winced as his back scraped across his seat. He had refused to spend the time to go to a hospital after the fight with the Abraxas. He insisted he needed a quick fix, just enough to get through the next twenty-four hours. After that, it would be too late anyway. Donohue’s medic had patched him up, and thrust a handful of painkillers at him.
Christa’s headset sizzled with a fizz of the lightning that flashed behind them, then Braydon’s voice. “We’re flying into a trap,” he said. “Contreras let us get away from that yacht way too easy.”
“
Almost getting killed was easy. Surviving it,” she said, “not so much.”
“
He’s played us against ourselves before,” he said. “We’re overlooking something.”
“
Don’t overlook what we’re looking over,” she said. She gestured out the window. Endless variations of green. “The nearest village is miles downriver, and that was no more than a half dozen round buildings with thatch roofs. The only way in or out of here is by air or dugout canoe.” She pointed at the serpentine waterway snaking through the dense jungle. “They can’t beat us without a helicopter.”
“
Thar she blows,” said Donohue. He nodded towards Christa’s side of the chopper. “The Demon’s Wings rock formation. Given Luna’s map, that’s got to be it at our ten o’clock.”
From the air, it did look like the backs of a pair of whales arching above the ocean of green. Donohue maneuvered the chopper downwards. A different perspective emerged, the curved shoulders of a hunched bird of prey so large that it towered above the tree canopy.
Braydon scoured the jungle with field glasses. “Contreras’s guerillas could have a platoon staking out the temple and we wouldn’t see them in that vegetation,” he said. “Gabriella said they were close to finding it when Percival rescued her.”
“
I don’t see anyone,” she said. “And they don’t have Luna’s map.”
“
They had Dubler,” he said. “He had seen Luna’s map.”
Christa grabbed her armrest as Donohue corrected against a downdraft. The colonel’s expression was grave. “At least they didn’t get the original from your brother-in-law. He is damn lucky he wasn’t killed and Luna’s map wasn’t compromised,” Donohue growled, his anger clear even through the headset. “He should have waited for my strike force before engaging the enemy.”
Donohue’s zeal for military parlance put her on edge. “He had the Muisca Indians fighting with him,” she said. “The shaman had convinced the tribe to attack. Their families’ safety was at risk. They were ready, pumped up. In military terms, he had an overwhelming force to scare off Contreras’s guerillas.” The news in the last radio transmission to reach them was better than they could have hoped for. Percival, alongside the Muisca fighters, had rescued Gabriella. Then the other boot dropped. Percival had been shot in the gut. He needed medical attention. And Gabriella had twisted, maybe broken, her ankle in the skirmish.
“
Doubtful,” said Braydon, “Hardline mercenaries would not retreat before a math professor, a botanist, and a handful of brave but primitively armed Indians. His wife’s life was in danger. That kind of thing can make a man act, not think.”
“
For once I agree with Fox,” Donohue grumbled. “But we got to stay on target.”
A bang of distant thunder rattled the sides of the chopper. The concussion shoved the chopper sideways.
Donohue, intense but calm, corrected. “Crap,” he said. “That felt like anti-aircraft fire.”
“
No such luck,” said Braydon. He pointed out his window. Christa leaned forward to look beyond Braydon. An immense plume of smoke billowed into the sky from the mountains on the horizon.
“
What happened to God being on our side,” she said, her throat dry. “The volcano. It’s erupting.”
Donohue banked the chopper for a better view. “Who in hell did you piss off this time, Fox?” Lightning fizzed through her headset. Thunder rumbled, shaking the chopper. “My men’s clearing is up ahead,” said Donohue. “ETA two minutes. We land, get the intel, take off. We are out of time, people. As soon as we take off with my strike force, Hunter, Gabriella, my medic and the shaman will head downriver in the dugout canoe for the Doctors without Borders clinic. We swing by and help with evacuation when the mission is complete.”
“
Isn’t that volcano in the direction of the temple?” she said.
“
I figure about twenty klicks west of our target,” said Braydon. “How does a Blackhawk handle in an ash cloud?”
“
I’ve flown in worse,” said Donohue, “but let’s not stop for tea.”
The clearing was ahead, at a bend in the river. It looked like a scar, a bullet hole punched through the green. In less than three hours, the strike force had arrived, secured the area, and cleared away the nearly impenetrable jungle with two chainsaws, machetes and muscle. Their three motorized dugout canoes nosed the shore like curious fish. A small wood fire fought bravely against the wind, sending out its plume of smoke, a scaled down version of the deadly cloud growing on the horizon.
The chopper circled before landing. Christa counted eight of Donohue’s men, all dressed in full combat fatigues, each with a camouflage helmet with goggles. Each clutched a machine gun clipped to his vest like a mother with her baby. The chopper wash flattened the scrappy vegetation at their feet. The men were poised, ready for action. They were all retired military, but not one of them had to suck in a beer belly. Each looked like they could take out three guys half their age and better armed.
She twisted in her seat to find Percival. He was lying on the ground at the edge of the clearing nearest the fire. That had to be the shaman bending over Percy’s prone body. The man, dressed in what looked like red Bermuda shorts and a feathered headband, was blowing smoke over Percy, taking a puff off a long-stemmed pipe, then blowing again. Gabriella sat on Percival’s other side. She let go of his hand and waved both arms at the chopper, her expression both fearful and relieved. Christa swallowed down a flood of emotion at seeing her sister.
As the skids set down, one of Donohue’s men ran to them in a crouched position and slid open the door on Christa’s side of the helicopter. Donohue toggled a series of switches, and turned to face her. “This is Leader,” he shouted. “Retired Navy seal. He’ll be in command of the ground force at the temple.”
Christa nodded. She removed her headset and scrambled out, staying low to avoid the wash of the blades, holding on to the brim of the camouflage hat that held back her hair. Braydon stayed behind with Donohue in the chopper, shouting a conversation with him and Leader, something about another helicopter in the vicinity thirty minutes earlier. She crossed the clearing and hurried straight for Percival.
She crouched when she reached Gabriella. They shared a tight but abbreviated embrace. Percy didn’t look good. His face was pale, clammy. He was either asleep or unconscious. An IV bag hung on a makeshift pole whittled from a sapling. The steam from the tea in a metal cup by his head carried a sharp, woodsy aroma. The medicine man no doubt had concocted the potion. One or the other of the liquid elixirs, maybe both, might be the only thing keeping him alive. She lifted the coarse blanket covering him. His wound had been bandaged, but blood was seeping through.
Gabriella’s ankle was expertly bound with a stretchy, flesh-colored bandage, but her foot was bare and dirty, too swollen for her boot. She still wore her “field uniform,” as she called it, khaki shirt, shorts and a tan old-style photographer’s vest with multiple patch pockets, but it was torn, streaked with mud and smelled of sweat. She looked like she hadn’t showered, or slept more than a few hours, in days.
Gabriella grasped her hand and squeezed, but it felt weak, depleted. “Any news on Liam?”
“
Nothing since the last radio transmission.”
“
I’m going to kill Contreras for what he did to my son.”
“
Get in line, behind me.”
The shaman muted his chanting. He no longer blew smoke over Percy. The small, old man sat back on his haunches. His eyes were black and sharp as obsidian. He understood every word she had said. The shaman, against his bare, brown chest, wore a pendant of gold. It was beautifully crafted, a bird of prey, with hunched wings, its pounded gold beak sharp, its talons outstretched, curved and hooked. Gold, as Conroy said, endures. And so did certain friendships.
Gabriella gestured towards the shaman. “This is Jairo Salaman.” She spoke a few words in the local dialect. Salaman nodded.
Conroy’s golden El Dorado figurine was in the velvet pouch that once held the Emerald and Turquoise. She unbuttoned her camouflage shirt, opened the pouch’s drawstrings, and let El Dorado dance onto her open palm. She held it towards the shaman.
A glitter sparkled in his black eye. A smile formed from his wrinkle of a mouth. “Conroy,” the shaman said.
“
Your old friend told me to bring this figurine to you,” she said. “Conroy remembered your father’s words, that El Dorado is a guardian, between Earth and Heaven. Only he can show you the way to paradise. Only El Dorado can show us the entrance to the Oculto Canyon.”
Salaman untied the leather string that held his golden eagle pendant. He took the El Dorado figurine from Christa’s open palm, and hooked it onto the eagle’s talons. El Dorado dangled below the eagle. Salaman spoke. Gabriella translated. “Jairo says that the words passed down to him are, when the eagle of the Earth meets the eagle of Heaven, El Dorado will be the guide.”
“
That’s it?” asked Christa. “What does it mean?”
“
It’s been five hundred years,” said Gabriella, “but less is lost in translation than you might think.”
“
Thanks, Gabby. Very helpful.”
Salaman held the leather string out towards her. Christa bowed so he could tie it around her neck. The beautiful golden pendant looked incongruously fragile and beautiful against her camouflage shirt. It was a reminder that it wasn’t the pendant’s creators who had caused this pending catastrophe. “I will do all I can to follow El Dorado’s guidance and return this pendant to you,” she said directly to Salaman.