Authors: Pamela Hegarty
“
You have a therapist?”
“
Planning on getting one,” he said. “Or you and I could get together for weekly sessions after this is over. I’m a good listener. We could save each other a bundle.”
“
We’re about to communicate with God,” she said. “I think you’re covered.”
“
This is the Old Testament God,” he said. “I confess to Him and He’ll smite me down with that lightning from the volcano.”
As if on cue, thunder cracked the sky above them. Then, another sound, the sharp report of gunfire. Leader’s men crouched and fanned out along the perimeter of the clearing, laying down cover fire. The clearing exploded with noise. Braydon grabbed his Glock. Gunfire flashed from behind tree trunks and vines. Donohue’s men fired back furiously. Two of them lay on the ground, writhing in pain. One grabbed his calf, the other, his shoulder. Their buddies dragged them closer to the perimeter and cover. The one who had given Christa the fresh orange back in Bogota, nicknamed No Bull, fought hand to hand with a scrappy but huge guerilla dressed in muddied black pants and t-shirt and wielding a machete.
Leader gestured forcefully at Braydon. “Fall back into that tunnel,” he yelled. Braydon shoved her over the threshold of the tunnel, firing rapidly, the noise blasting.
The acrid smoke of gunfire mixed with the tunnel’s stench. “No way could they have hacked their way through the jungle that quickly,” she said, “even if they saw our drop zone.” The energy from the seven stones tingled through her spine. “You’re were right. Daniel must have tipped them off.”
“
Dubler wouldn’t be the first man to sell his soul to the devil for a chance to talk to God.” Braydon took aim, targeting the guerilla fighting No Bull. “Under the right circumstances even good men make the wrong decision.”
“
Including you?”
“
All the time,” he said. “Leader wanted to send you down the river with your sister, keep you out of the line of fire. I told him I didn’t stand a chance without you.”
Same here, not that she’d admit it. “I guarantee you had no chance of leaving me behind.”
“
Glad to hear it.” The guerilla threw a right cross at No Bull’s chin with the handle of the machete. No Bull stumbled back. Braydon’s finger squeezed the trigger. A deafening bang. The guerilla grabbed his chest and flung backwards, his machete arcing through the air.
Leader gave a sharp wave of his hand. “Go, Fox! Now!” From either side, Leader’s men ran in front of them, laying down covering fire. No Bull swooped up his gun and led the left flank.
Braydon spun, grabbed her hand. Together, they ran towards the cold, dark stench of death.
CHAPTER
65
Christa ran deeper into the tunnel. She crouched. It grew narrow, darker. Braydon’s footsteps scruffed the gravel behind her. Those guys back there, they could be outmanned, outgunned. Two of them already wounded, in pain. Sacrificing for her, for this one and only one chance to do the impossible. To restore the Breastplate of Aaron, to open a passage to a hidden canyon, to a life-giving antidote. To the life beyond death. And, God help her, she believed she could do it. Because she had to do it.
A diffused light brushed the tunnel ahead. She glanced back at Braydon. “The end of the tunnel, Braydon. This sounds crazy. But I can feel it. I can feel the energy in the Breastplate.”
“
Not bright enough to be much of an opening,” he said.
“
It’s got to be the inner chamber of the temple.” She quickened her pace.
“
Could be a trap.”
“
Could be salvation.” She skidded to a stop and clenched her stomach. A headless skeleton lay sprawled at her feet, just inside the chamber. What had been jaunty red pantaloons was now a faded rag of a shroud, eaten away, disturbingly, at the corpse’s privates. Ribs poked out of what had been a linen tunic. A remnant of a sole was all that was left of his boots.
He didn’t die alone. Headless skeletons lay scattered around the packed earth floor, each shrouded in faded, torn clothing, bristling with ancient blow darts. Their bones were picked clean by insects long dead. Their skulls, arranged in a ghastly pyramid, gaped at her from the far corner, hollow eyes filled with rage and pity. A ray of daylight speared through a circular opening in the stone ceiling directly on sun-bleached craniums. Its glow illuminated the circular walls in an eerie red. It looked more like a large cistern or well than a place of worship.
“
If these poor bastards were Alvaro Contreras’s conquistadors, then where are their metal Breastplates, not to use the term lightly?”
“
Braydon, we don’t have time for a history lesson.”
“
That shaman said the ghost tribe would never let anyone else abuse the power of the Breastplate. Maybe they beat us to it, by five hundred years.”
“
Only the nobles and rich could afford body armor,” she said. “And Spain wasn’t about to subsidize fortune seekers who were likely to wind up dead. These guys were required to pony up their own clothing and weapon, or they wouldn’t get paid. And a knife didn’t count. That was considered a tool. Usually their “armor” was a thick leather tunic at best. The term conquistador wasn’t even coined until 1830.”
“
This guy had chain mail,” Braydon said, pointing to the skeleton nearest him. The linked metal pieces forming his tunic were stiff and brown with rust.
“
One of the lucky ones,” she said, “so to speak.”
The muted raps of gunfire echoed around the chamber. Leader’s team wouldn’t be able to hold their attackers off much longer.
She grabbed Braydon’s hand. “Salvatierra wrote that he buried the Breastplate of Aaron under the pile of heads,” she said. They leaped over the corpse, and crossed to the pyramid of skulls. They crouched by it.
“
History is not going to repeat itself,” she said. “Not here, not now.” She reached for a skull. This guy was dead, long dead. It was bone, that’s all. “Not under my watch. Contreras’s men were mad to think they’d draft the tribesmen into their new army by poisoning their families.” She set it aside. Next one would be easier, maybe.
Braydon picked up a skull with massively decayed teeth. “Poor sap,” he said. “You should see the cavities. I’d feel sorry for him,” he tossed away the skull, “if he hadn’t committed genocide. Hold on.”
Christa leaned in closer. “Gold.” It glinted in the sunlight, a wink through a hollow eye.
He tossed away the cranium and hastily pushed aside two skulls.
She grasped his arm. This was no dream. The Breastplate of Aaron. It was real. It was there. Within reach. “It’s magnificent,” she whispered, her throat dry. The Breastplate was square, hammered out of gold, attached by golden filaments to a tunic finely woven of threads that were ghosts of their former bright blues and reds. On the gold square, the mounts for the gems were equally spaced in four rows of three. It was intoxicating. She struggled to stay focused. She had to remember every detail. For Dad. “Five of the gems are still intact.”
“
The agate, amethyst, beryl, onyx and jasper. The first seven mounts are empty. Simple bezel setting,” he said. “Bent from Salvatierra’s rushed extraction of the gems, but the gold should be pliable enough to reset the stones.” The boom of an explosion blasted through the tunnel from the valley. The concussion rocked the chamber.
“
Time for a leap of faith,” she said.
“
Wait. This fabric will disintegrate the minute we pick it up.”
“
No, Braydon, it won’t.”
She grabbed the tunic by the shoulders and lifted it. A jawbone clattered off one corner. A whistle of wind spiraled around the chamber. Just wind, that’s all. The tunic stayed completely intact. It looked like it had been preserved in a climate-controlled museum case.
The earth rumbled. Braydon flinched as a chink of rock popped out of the far wall and crashed at his feet. “God’s telling us to either get the hell out or to hurry the hell up,” he said. “You get those seven stones back in the Breastplate. I’ll work on getting us out of here.”
Right. Stay focused. She crossed to the platform. The tunic was heavy, awkward with the weight of the golden Breastplate. She laid it on the platform.
Braydon moved to the perimeter of the room. “Something’s wrong,” he said.
“
You mean besides being surrounded by headless bodies and being chased by guys who want to kill us.” She shrugged off her pack.
“
The way their bodies are placed. It’s not natural.”
She looked around her as she unzipped her pack. He was right. The bodies formed a crude ring, the pyramid of skulls forming the ring’s “stone.” And she was in the center. “This is the platform Contreras was standing on when Salvatierra found him,” she said. “Where he wore the Breastplate. They were defending him.”
“
Two swords, rusty, two pikes, only three knives in what must have been leather sheaths before being eaten away,” Braydon said. “All by their sides. Hard to believe that the poison darts killed them so quickly that not a single one of these trained killers had a chance to swing a pike.”
“
Not pikes,” she said, “halberds, those long shafts with the nasty-looking metal ax. Very deadly, still used by the Vatican guard today. But I’m not letting live guys scare me off restoring the Breastplate, and certainly not dead ones.” First out, the linen napkin from the Waldorf Hotel. She opened it, revealing the diamond and sapphire. Magnificent. Mesmerizing. Her hands trembled. It wasn’t just the extraordinary history compressed into their facets, the fact that these two gems had altered the fates of sultans, kings, killers and saints. They actually glowed. And that humming in her ear, it wasn’t an aftereffect of the deafening gunshots. She laid flat the napkin, from the room where Jared Sadler had been left to bleed to death. She placed the Kohinoor Diamond and Edward’s Sapphire on it. These gems altered fates. She had to respect that, fight not to fear it.
“
One thing I learned mountain climbing,” he said, “the summit is only halfway there. Getting down is what kills a lot of people. Or, in this situation, getting out of this temple. The Breastplate is a means to an end. Our primary mission is to retrieve the antidote.” He pivoted towards the skylight. Thick, furry roots twisted down from the overgrowth above, like fingers reaching into a coffin. The ceiling was a good twenty feet up. He jumped up, just catching the end of the longest root dangling down. He yanked on it. Soil tumbled down. The vine snapped. He ducked as it coiled onto the floor.
She fished out the silver box, opened the lid. The five sacred stones glimmered and winked. It was a miracle, yet a feeling of dread nudged at her consciousness. These stones had caused thousands of deaths. What made her think they could save lives, too? Open a portal to her mother? Bring her father home?
Braydon stepped over the corpses to check out the far wall. It looked Incan, finely carved granite blocks, fitted perfectly together. Solid, apparently impenetrable. He flicked on his flashlight.
As her eyes adjusted, the details became distinct. Three words were painted, actually smeared by hand, in red, on the far wall. Ipse venena bibas.
“
A local dialect?”
Christa swallowed hard. “Latin,” she said. “Salvatierra’s language of choice, but the locals must have written it later. According to his letter, Salvatierra barely escaped with the seven stones when the temple started collapsing.”
Braydon sniffed it. “Much later,” he said. “Smells and looks like some kind of berry juice.” He turned towards her. “It’s still fresh.”
“
It’s a line from a Catholic exorcism in the middle ages, addressing Satan” she said. “Ipse venena bibas. May you drink the poisons yourself.”
“
I was hoping for This Way Out,” he said. “I smell sulfur, and this wall is granite.”
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Brimstone,” she said. “In Biblical times, sulfur was called brimstone.”
“
As in fire and brimstone?” He extracted his Eagle Scout knife from his pocket, opened the blade, and jimmied it between two of the tightly fitted stones in the wall. He showed her the blade. A yellow powder tipped it.
“
The kind of sermon that reminds sinners that hell awaits those who don’t repent.”
He dipped his finger in the yellow powder, placed it on the tip of his tongue. “The kind of sulfur that’s mixed with gunpowder to make an explosive,” he said.
“
You remember Contreras’s last words?”
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Something about breaking your neck.”
“
No, I mean Alvaro Contreras, to Salvatierra,” she said.
“
The gems of the Breastplate reveal the secret to my domination. Don the Breastplate. Stand upon this platform. Call God’s light to shine upon you. You will hold the powers of the Heavens in the palm of your hand.
I’m no Eagle Scout, but I know how to start a campfire with a magnifying glass focusing sunlight on dry tinder.”
“
I’d rather use C-4, but if it’s brimstone we got, then we’d better remember the Bible.” He came to her side.
“
You shall make the Breastplate of judgment,”
she said.
“And you shall put settings of stones in it, four rows of stones:
The first
row
shall be
a sardius, a topaz, and an Emerald.”