by Rob Jones
“It’s actually quite eerie,” Lexi said, tracing her finger along a wall as she walked. “I mean, there are so many old houses here, and rooms… I think I can feel eyes on me all the time.”
“You think someone’s watching us?” Reaper said.
“Not exactly… I’m just creeped out by this place, that's all.”
“The architecture is amazing,” Lea said. “Don’t you think, Ry?”
“If you say so.”
“Just a shame Luis never made it,” she said quietly. “Or Professor Balta.”
“Damn right,” Hawke said. “Kruger can pay for that along with everything else as soon as we catch up with him. Maria, Luis, Balta… the way he treated Ryan. He’s going to pay for it all.”
Further in the city, the atmosphere started to change. Somewhere high up above their heads they heard the cry of a king vulture. Looking up, Lexi watched the startled bird leap from a ledge and fly up into the throat of the volcano. It heaved its body into the crater on massive black wings and vanished over the rim.
“Not digging this, Joe,” Lea said.
They turned from the vulture and looked at Lea. “What is it?”
She pointed to what looked like some kind of temple. “Look on the wall – recognize it?”
Hawke recognized it all right. Scratched into the wall above the shrine were two Greek letters: ΆΘ. “Bugger.”
“My sentiments exactly. How the hell is the sign of the Athanatoi carved into a wall on the inside of a lava cave in deepest, darkest Peru?”
“Simple explanation,” Reaper said. “We’re not the first to find this place. The Immortals already got here.”
“And check this out,” Scarlet said, further along the cave wall. “Another set of the Greek letters inside a weird, standing man, and all around him are people on their knees.”
“They’re worshipping him!”
“Worshipping the Athanatoi?”
Their awed silence was broken by the sound of a gunshot and then screaming. The yelling was Kruger, as usual, and he was barking commands once again.
“Where did it come from?” Ryan asked,
“Sodding echo makes it hard to tell,” Lea said.
Reaper turned three-sixty as he looked down all the streets leading away from the temple area. “I think over there, to the north.”
They pushed on, still lit from above but the sun’s illumination was growing weaker. What was bright Peruvian sunshine was now a thin, watery light thanks to the many filters of vines it had to pass through before it reached them far below on the floor of the volcano.
Hawke thought once again about the people who had been following them… He hadn’t told the others because he didn’t want to freak them out, but that time was fast running out. He knew who they were, or at least he knew who he thought they were. They’d been trailing them since they climbed out of the chopper, and yet had stayed almost completely out of sight. If it hadn’t been for his extensive training in jungle warfare he would never had known they were there, on their tail.
He knew they were from some kind of Amazonian tribe. That was obvious, but what intrigued Hawke was the idea that they were simply guarding their home, and that this place was their territory… that Paititi, the Lost City of the Incas, known to the entire world for centuries in countless legends and myths, was simply someone’s home. If that was the truth, then he strongly doubted they’d ever had contact with any other humans, and that could make them either easier to handle, or extremely unpredictable and dangerous. Worse than that, there was no way to know how many of them there were and they had the home advantage. To say it was not an ideal situation was a wild understatement.
Lea sighed. “Where is that bastard Kruger?”
“There!” Scarlet said. “They’re down there.”
“Speak of Cao Cao and Cao Cao arrives,’ Lexi said.
Using the northern city wall for cover they looked down toward the northern edge of the volcano and saw Saqqal and Kruger and the others. The men were standing well back from the bank of a very small river in front of a strange shrine, and all were wearing NBC suits. The shrine was ornate enough at the base, but the top was what freaked them all out – a humanoid figure with two long, twisted horns protruding from its head, a devilish fanged grin on its face and two wild, crazed eyes staring back at the city.
“Okay, two questions,” Lea said. “Why are they wearing those suits, and what the hell is that thing with the horns?”
“Supay,” Ryan said. “The Incan god of death. As for the suits, I can’t help you.”
“Oh, excellent,” Lea said. “I never said anything to you guys but I was so hoping we’d end up fighting another god of death.”
Hawke frowned. “The suits worry me more.”
Saqqal ordered Rajavi to get something out of a large bag and moments later he produced a shining steel container not much bigger than a lunch box. Jawad pointed and said a few words, and in response Kruger and Corzo took a few more steps back from the water.
“What are they doing?” Lexi asked.
Hawke watched the men. “Something tells me they’re not here for the gold and diamonds.”
Scarlet brushed some hair away from her eyes. “Those suits are not a good development in this mission.”
Lea heard nothing, but she felt it.
A sharp, stabbing pain between her shoulder blades.
She turned and gasped when she saw the Indian tribesmen behind them.
Hawke turned but it was too late. At least a dozen warriors were standing around them, all armed with spears and arrows and blowpipes. Their silent footfall had allowed them to creep up within feet of them.
A man with a strange criss-cross tattoo on his face waved his spear in Hawke’s face and indicated he should get up and raise his hands in the air.
Hawke followed the instructions and the others followed suit, and then the tattooed man called out in a strange language and Dirk Kruger looked up. His face was obscured behind the gas mask and hard to see, but Hawke guessed he wasn’t smiling.
The South African archaeologist shouted back a string of commands in the tribesman’s language and the next thing he knew they were being marched down to the river bank with their hands above their heads.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The Syrian general had stopped them at least a hundred yards from the river, more out of concern for the tribe than the ECHO team, and now Hawke stared at Kruger and felt his blood rising. He had faced many enemies in his life, but never had he experienced anything like he was feeling now. The man he was staring at, this bastard, had put Ryan Bale through hell and threatened his young life. Now, he was threatening the lives of the few good friends he had left after the carnage of the Seastead battle.
“What’s the matter, Englishman?” Kruger crowed. “Not used to losing?”
Hawke said nothing.
“The fucking cat got your tongue, or what?” Kruger said. As he spoke, Rajavi padded over to them with a gun in his hands.
Scarlet took a step forward and sneered. “Is that gas mask how Mrs Kruger likes it in bed?”
Kruger gave the order and Rajavi slapped Scarlet into the dirt, and then all the men in gas masks laughed for a few moments. Kruger walked over to them and took a deep breath as he surveyed the gigantic volcano cave. “Think about how many stupid bastards tried to find this place!” he said, and then he raised his voice to a maniacal shout. “And now it’s all mine!”
When his voice had finished echoing off the cave walls, Lea spoke up. “It’s only fitting considering that you’re the biggest stupid bastard of them all.”
Kruger reached out and grabbed her by the hair, pulling her head down to waist height and starting to shake it around as he yelled in her face. “Maybe you should be a little nicer to this stupid bastard before he blows your fucking head off?”
Hawke lunged forward, never wanting to kill a man more than this, but before he got five yards Rajavi stepped in and beat him to the ground
with his rifle stock.
Kruger smirked. “Now be nice and quiet while we get on with our business.”
Saqqal sent Rajavi and Corzo to the shore of the underground river. Despite their NBC suits, neither looked very happy about going, but they obeyed, and moments later they collected a sample of damp soil from the riverbed.
Saqqal then ordered Dr Jawad forward with his soil-testing kit. The bacteriologist padded forward through the rubble and moss, stumbling occasionally on pieces of loose rock before finally reaching the sample.
“It’s never a nice feeling,” Scarlet said, “when you’re the only one in a room full of people wearing NBC suits.”
“What sort of parties do you go to?” Lexi said.
Over the next few minutes Bashir Jawad worked diligently on the riverbank while Rajavi kept the ECHO team in place with his submachine gun. With the silicon face under the NBC suit he was the man behind the mask behind the mask, and it looked even weirder than usual.
Hawke stepped back, keeping one eye on the bacteriologist and the other firmly fixed on Rajavi who was still holding the submachine gun in his face.
Saqqal took a couple of steps forward, a look of anxious expectancy in the eyes lurking behind the NBC face mask. The humidity in the small cavern was high, and they were all covered in a persistent film of sweat.
“Well?” Saqqal snapped.
Jawad turned and looked faintly ridiculous as he nodded in the NBC suit.
Saqqal gasped audibly and turned to Kruger, shaking his hand. “Then that confirms it. Well done, Mr Kruger! You have been true to your word. I will wire one hundred million dollars into your account as soon as we’re in Rio and the rest of this city is yours to gut at any time you choose.”
“What the hell is this?” Hawke said.
Kruger turned to him. “Meet Utopia… a bacterial infection totally unknown to modern science. Think of it as a sort of mutated halfway house between the bubonic plague and anthrax, capable of existing outside of both reservoir and vector for an almost limitless time. Its power is in its will to live… the fastest bacteria we know doubles every four hours, but not this stuff. In the hour we’ve been here our tests show it doubles every few minutes – but only when exposed to the atmosphere. When it’s underwater it reproduces at a normal rate. But if this is released into the air outside it will mutate and reproduce while airborne into a devastating cloud of death.”
“And you’re waking it from the dead to play with it,” Lea said in disgust. “You are absolutely out of your freaking mind.”
“That is distinctly possible,” Kruger said with a dismissive glance emanating from behind the mask. “My friend the general here is of the opinion it can also be weaponized. The deal is I get all the lost treasure for myself and another one hundred million on top, and he gets the nasties in the river.”
“You’re going to allow him to spread this thing across the world?”
“Not the world – just the United States and Europe, and of course – only after we have created an antidote for ourselves.”
“But why?” Lea said.
Saqqal replied, his voice cold and hard. “It is time for the pestilent West to be annihilated and wiped from the surface of this world. Only then may we grow spiritually as a people and know real peace.” He paused and indicated the vast city of gold behind them “Do you think the people of a city like this would just give it up? Why do you think the Incas disappeared from history so fast? The answer, my friends, is Utopia. It wiped them all out, and that is what I intend to do to the West! Only then will the world be liberated.” He held the vial up to the light streaming down from the crater and stared at it through the goggles in his gas mask.
“If you had a mind you’d be out of it,” Hawke said.
“Your pathetic insults mean nothing to me,” Saqqal said. “Besides, there’s already a good chance you’ve already contracted Utopia. It has been dormant beneath the water for countless centuries, and drinking the water would be fatal, naturally. Whether or not you have caught it we cannot tell, but you should know that Dr Jawad here considers it to be highly contagious… as history has shown.”
“And what about the tribe?” Lea said. “Don’t you care about them?”
“No,” Saqqal said flatly.
Hawke shook his head in disgust. “If I were you I’d scare myself. You’re a madman!”
Saqqal gave a shallow nod of evaluation as if he were seriously weighing the possibility in his mind. “Perhaps.”
“Isn’t this treasure enough for you?” Lea said, taking another step back from the river.
“And what can treasure give me that Utopia cannot? With the power to realign global politics and wipe out as much of the human population wherever I choose I will have something much greater than a pile of gold plates and jewel-encrusted statues. Your problem is that you do not think big enough.”
“My problem right now is that you’re insane.”
“If I am insane then I have been driven mad by the lust for revenge. Three years ago the American fighters killed my family while they slept in their beds. The rage grew inside me until it was no longer containable. I have had much time to consider what it’s like to feel that much anger coursing through your veins night and day. I wonder if it has driven me to a kind of madness.” He turned to face Hawke. “But the thing is I don’t care at all. All I care about is that the people who murdered my wife and children will now pay a truly unthinkable price, and they will pay that price to me – Ziad Saqqal.”
Lea had been edging closer to Rajavi, and suddenly she made a lunge for the submachine gun. She grappled with him for the gun and almost got her hands on the handle but then the Iranian saw what she was doing and swiftly pulled it away.
Hawke burst into action but Kruger whipped a pistol out of his belt and told him to get back.
Now, Rajavi was moving his hands up around Lea’s neck and beginning to choke her. Up close she was even more terrified by the weird mask and struggled to get out of his grip. His breathing became more rapid under the silicon layer and the only sign of humanity was his crazed, bloodshot eyes as they blinked madly from behind the two crude slits that lurked under the NBC goggles.
She brought her knee up into his balls and he flinched but didn’t let go, so she did it again and then a third time. He took one of his hands off her throat and tried to use it to stop her knee from coming up a fourth time but she was too fast and delivered the heftiest smack of them all. It did the trick and then a strange howl emanated from behind the mouth slit in the mask and he staggered back in pain.
“Enough!” Saqqal barked.
Corzo walked over and pushed Lea back to the others, and helped Rajavi to his feet. The Iranian knocked him back and snatched up the gun.
“How did you know this was here, Saqqal?” Ryan asked.
“Mr Kruger here has been studying Inca quipus for a very long time.”
“Indeed, I have. You see, they are a form of semasiography, and on top of being used for purposes of arithmetic they were also used for recording other narratives, such as myths, legends and much more prosaic things like diaries. It didn’t take me long to realize that the many references to a flood could be instead referring to a kind of devastating plague. And that’s when the penny dropped, as you say.” He turned to Ryan. “Should have stuck with me, kid.”
“Drop dead,” Ryan said.
Kruger turned to leave. “Sadly, it is now time to leave you in the charming company of the Paititi Tribe. I gave them that name because they were only discovered by me a few hours ago. Luckily they seem to speak a dialect of Takana or I would probably be in as much trouble as you are all in right now. As you saw, they are already smitten with me.” He gave a cruel laugh and shouted at the warriors.
They leaped into action, pulling their blowpipes out and loading them up.
“What the hell’s going on?” Lexi screamed.
“They’re poison darts,” Hawke yelled. “Look up there on the ridge about
a third of the way up the volcano wall behind the shrine.”
“Shit, they really are blowguns!” Scarlet said.
“Oh for fuck’s sake!” Lea said. “Not more bloody blowguns and poison darts. Did we not get enough of those in friggin’ Mexico?”
“Why don’t you go and complain about it to them,” Scarlet said. We know they’ve had zero contact with Western civilization so I’m sure it will all go very well. Do you know the sign language for ‘please make it quick because I don’t like pain’?”
“Oh, piss off, Cairo!”
Hawke’s mind raced. He’d heard rumors about lost Indian tribes in the Amazon when he was training in Belize, and they weren’t all that reassuring. Many people had claimed to have discovered the last lost tribe – the Mashco Piro tribe being the most recent, but like many, Hawke had his suspicions that there were plenty more out there who wished to stay lost. The Amazon rainforest was a mostly uninhabited jungle half the size of Europe so the prospect of it concealing other lost tribes wasn’t exactly mind-blowing, and now they had the proof.
And it was with that thought that he turned to watch even more warriors now gathering on the upper level. They were wearing some kind of reddish clay-colored paint and held a variety of weapons besides the blowpipes.
Kruger beamed. “My new friends are going to ensure you stay where you are while we load up the choppers with the finest pieces of this wonderful treasure, and then when they see their new gods fly away, they are ordered to kill you. They tell me it is their tradition to cannibalize their dead, so you will end your days as lunch for these fine warriors.”
They watched Saqqal and Kruger, still in NBC suits and flanked by Jawad, Rajavi and Corzo, as they ambled up the hill into the northern part of the city. They filled their bags with various pieces Kruger selected from the heaps of gold and gems scattered all over the city, and then they began to shuffle toward the lava tube in the southern part of the city.
Kruger called out a command which echoed through the dormant volcano and the warriors raised their blowpipes to their mouths. A second command from Kruger and they began firing the poison darts at the ECHO team.
