by JC Ryan
THE INCA CON
___________________________________
A REX DALTON THRILLER
BOOK FIVE
JC Ryan
Your Free Gift
As a way of saying thanks for your purchase, I’m offering you a free eBook if you join my newsletter here: JC Ryan Books
Rex Dalton and his dog, Digger, visited the island of Olib in Croatia.
A girl was murdered.
The police said it was her boyfriend who stabbed her to death, but Rex and Digger had no doubt they were making a big mistake.
Dalton decided to conduct his own investigation and bring the real killer to justice.
A thriller with quirks and twists that will keep you guessing until the end.
Click here to get it now.
Dedication
Dedicated to my good friend Mitch Pender, a military dog trainer, for giving me the idea for this series and guiding me through the intricate and amazing capabilities and psychology of those majestic four-legged soldiers.
Mitch has a lifetime of experience and exceptional depth of knowledge as a military dog handler and trainer.
About The Inca Con
Rex Dalton, and his best friend, Digger, the former military dog, are exploring the remarkable history of Peru when they befriend a retired American couple. The couple invites them to join their expedition to a remote village high up in the Andes Mountains to inspect an archaeological site in which they want to invest.
But on arrival in the village, it doesn’t take long for Rex to discover that his new friends are victims of a cleverly designed con. Rex could not stand by idly while the old couple is swindled out of their money.
But when he and Digger get involved, they soon find they have to deal with more than just the conman. A terrorist group also gets involved in the scheme, and if that is not enough, the conman calls in help as well. Not only does Rex have to protect the old couple he also has to protect the villagers.
Contents
Your Free Gift
Dedication
About The Inca Con
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Rex Dalton’s Next Adventure
The French Girl
More Rex Dalton
Also by JC Ryan
The Rossler Foundation Mysteries
The Carter Devereux Mystery Thrillers
The Exonerated
Your Free Gift
About JC Ryan
Copyright
One
HE’D CHOSEN THE high road, which added two hours to his route, but he was in no hurry. The roundabout route rewarded him with a lifetime of breathtaking vistas to this invigorating experience. Walking easterly from Abancay to Curahuasi, Peru, the higher peaks of the Andes were usually on his left, while glimpses through river gorges flanked by lower peaks could be had on the right. Plenty of switchbacks reversed the views in some places, and at times they walked toward the north or the south, following the steep road that would eventually lead downward as steeply as it had led upward.
Rex Dalton and his constant companion, his Dutch Shepherd dog, Digger, had arrived in Lima on the day of the spring equinox. In the intervening weeks, they’d wandered as the wind took them, exploring the rich history of the western bulge of Peru. They had just missed the best traveling weather for one of the most famous of all Peruvian destinations, Machu Picchu. Before the rainy season started in earnest, it was time.
Approaching the Sacred Valley on foot had been a whim, but after nearly fifteen hours on the road from Abancay, where he turned in his rental vehicle, Rex was committed to the plan. The difference between fifteen hours on foot and four in a car was the opportunity to stop and drink in the spectacular scenery that would have otherwise whizzed by barely noticed.
Digger seemed to enjoy it, too, dashing here and there to inspect some item of interest only to a dog. A bit of a nuisance, but a bit entertaining, was Digger’s apparent mission to catch a vizcacha. The peculiar animals, related to chinchillas but looking more like a long-tailed, rather short-eared rabbit, were plentiful along the trail. Their homes, resembling a prairie-dog colony in numbers, interested Digger a great deal, and Rex found it amusing to see him race around after an adult, while the rest of them hurried the babies in among the rocks where he couldn’t reach them.
Rex had camped overnight, though he could have walked the entire fifteen hours in one day. He’d elected to break it up because there would be only twelve hours of sunlight. Starting before dawn wouldn’t have been an issue but descending the last set of switchbacks after dark wasn’t prudent. He planned to get to Curahuasi in time for a midday meal before finding a room for the night, and he was on target when he reached the intersection of Route 116 – the high road – and 3S, the main road. Only a little over a mile to go.
When Rex arrived in the center of the dusty little town, he looked for a café first. He’d have preferred one with tables outside, but the first one he came to had only a wide opening for a door, with tables inside. Oddly enough, it was a pizza restaurant. Digger’s nose lifted at the aromas emanating from the open door.
“Really, Digger? You want pizza in Peru?”
Digger’s mouth stretched in a dog’s broad grin, his tongue lolled out, and if he could have spoken, he’d have said, “Why not?”
Rex could think of several reasons why not, including that garlic, an essential ingredient of pizza in his opinion, was toxic to dogs. And the fact that he had no idea what a Peruvian pizza might have for toppings. But it seemed to be the only option. He’d have to figure out something else for Digger, who had made it clear from the time they became partners that he expected human food. They’d had an ongoing struggle on that subject, and Rex had become an expert on what Digger could or shouldn’t eat.
As he stepped inside, and his eyes adjusted to the dim interior from the bright sunlight outside, he realized it wasn’t the dingy, dirt-floored establishment he’d expected. The tables were draped with cream-colored cloths, brown runners placed precisely in the middle to bisect the length. A clean tile floor, devoid of animal hair, suggested the place wasn’t dog-friendly.
“Digger, you’d better wait outside. Stay.”
Digger flopped down on his belly with a sigh that Rex interpreted as dissatisfied acquiescence.
“Hey, you picked the place. I’ll bring you a slice, and if you behave, maybe more.”
Rex went on in and allowed a young woman with a sleek black bun at the nape of her neck to lead him to a table. The establishment wasn’t crowded, but a couple of other tables were occupied, one by two men talking earnestly in stage whispers, and the other by an older couple, tanned and fit for their apparent age, which was betrayed by their graying hair.
The two men could have been American or European, but they spoke English. The whispers didn’t convey an accent. Both were blond, though one was older than the other. Rex couldn’t see their eyes, and they didn’t appear to be much above or below average height.
Rex ordered the house special, wondering if it would resemble an American or an Italian pizza in any way. He didn
’t particularly care. He wasn’t picky about his food. In his thirty-six years, he’d dined on unremarkable but satisfying home cooking from the German-influenced kitchen of his midwestern-raised mother, to the cuisine of countries all over the world in his past life as a field operative of a top-secret black ops paramilitary organization. It was during his time in the latter that he learned that food, as long as it wouldn’t make him sick, was fuel, which would keep him going.
Digger might turn up his nose, though. He was a real pain in the ass sometimes when it came to food.
As he waited for his order to arrive, Rex became aware that the two men were discussing a misfortune that had befallen one of them, the younger one. He would have ignored them but couldn’t tune them out as the whispers became more strident and the younger man’s voice rose. With less than a foot between the tables, which were lined up in military precision, side by side, he and the couple on the other side of the table where the men were seated were witnesses to the narrative, whether they wanted to hear it or not.
“I’m telling you, I don’t know what to do,” the younger man hissed.
“And I’m telling you, your money is gone, and you might as well accept that fact,” the older one said with exaggerated patience. “There’s nothing you can do. Unless you’ve left something out. Tell me again.”
The younger man sighed heavily. “Telling you again won’t change the outcome.” His voice raised a few decibels.
“Just humor me.”
“Okay. Now please pay attention. I was looking at some curios in the marketplace over in Abancay. They looked old, and I thought I’d buy a statue of Virachocha.”
The older man interrupted. “Who’s that again?”
“The Inca god of creation. I’ve told you this. And it isn’t important. Just that it looked old.” The younger man was becoming more agitated, and his voice was rising in both volume and pitch.
“Okay, go on.”
“So, I’m looking at this statue, and this woman comes up to me and takes it out of my hands. She says, ‘It’s a fake.’”
“Did you believe her?”
“For crap’s sake, will you just let me tell the story?”
The older man took a long drink from the brown bottle in front of him and slammed it back on the table. “Fine. Go ahead.”
“I asked her, ‘How do you know?’, and she says she’s Ministry. She hands me a card. Ministry of Culture, it says. She tells me there are more fakes being sold than the genuine article, and then, get this, she says, ‘Lucky for you. Because it’s illegal to buy or sell the genuine antiquities.’
“It freaked me out. It was like she was threatening me, just because I was looking at this old statue, you know? Like she was accusing me of robbing Peru’s cultural heritage.” He stopped speaking, shook his head, and took a swig from his bottle of beer.
“And that was the last you saw her?”
“Yeah, that was the last I saw her. But before she left, she told me to call the number on her card if anyone offered me something that could be original. Seems the shop owners have gotten smart. They don’t put the real antiquities out for people to see. But when they see an American, like me, they think we all have money.”
“You do have money.”
“That’s beside the point. They’ll offer the real deal to Americans or other unsuspecting tourists. So, I was supposed to call this Agent Gonzales if that happened to me, and she’d come and arrest the shop owner.”
“And it happened to you,” the older man prompted, earning a glare from the raconteur.
“It did. Very next day, I’m looking at stuff in the Mercado Central here, and this creepy old man comes out and whispers he has what I’m looking for in the back. I mean, could have been anything, from drugs to women, whatever. I was curious, right? So, I follow him into the back room, and there’s this gorgeous gold medallion, had to be a good four ounces of high-grade gold, right? Carved in the shape of Inti.”
“I hesitate to ask.”
“The sun god. Jeez, don’t you ever listen to anything I tell you?”
The older man made a gesture with his hand, to indicate the other should continue.
“So, I’m thinking, that’s gotta be the genuine article. I tell the shop owner, ‘Just a minute. I need to get my partner here to talk about this.’ I’m gonna call the agent, right? Gonzales? But the shop owner says, ‘You must hurry. Another buyer is coming.’
“I figure he’s playing me, but then someone else comes in to look at it. He and the shop owner are jabbering away in Spanish, and he pulls out his wallet. So I figure, I’ve got seconds to get this, and I’d better do it, or this priceless artifact will be gone forever. You should have seen the guy who entered the shop – he was swarthy.”
“Swarthy? Did you just say ‘swarthy’? The hell does that mean?”
“You know. Dark. Dark skin, dark hair, dark personality. I figure he’s a smuggler.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” The older guy shook his head.
Rex shared his disgust. The young guy was looking more and more like an idiot. He couldn’t help but think about the old adage; since light travels faster than sound, some people appear to be bright until you hear them speak. He’d just described every native Peruvian male, except for the personality part. Rex thought Peruvians were unaccountably happy, considering their poverty.
“No, seriously. This guy was not a good guy. So I tell the shop owner I’ll take it.”
“You bought the statue.”
“Yeah, but first it was a bidding war. I had to pay almost a hundred thousand for it.”
“Dollars?” The older man’s eyebrows levitated to a spot under his shock of blond bangs.
“Soles. But that’s still a chunk of change, about thirty K US, right?”
“And you bought it why?”
“To keep it from leaving the country, of course! I figured the shop owner would get busted, I’d get my money back, and this Gonzales chick might be grateful, know what I mean?” The younger man leered as he said it.
“Shit, Junior, how thick are you? So, what’s the problem? She’s not grateful enough?”
“The problem is that the number on the card is fake.”
“And…”
“And as soon as I called and found out it was fake, I got worried. I mean, could I get arrested for buying this thing?”
“I have no idea, you might very well find your ass in the slammer.”
“Well, that’s my problem.”
“I suggest you pre-empt it all and go to the police and tell them this story,” the older man said, with a show of indifference.
“Dude, that could get me thrown in jail!” the young man continued.
“I don’t know what you want me to do about it. I swear you’ve got more money than brains. Man up.”
“But, Uncle Rich, what if they arrest me?”
Rex looked from the blond older man to the tow-headed youth. He didn’t see a resemblance, other than the color of their hair. Maybe the ‘uncle’ was honorary.
What difference does it make? None. I’m not involved in this.
Rex had to put his hand over his face to hide the grin when Einstein’s words popped up in his mind. “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
Rex had eaten all the pizza he wanted, and he knew Digger was waiting for his share. Surprisingly, it was a pretty good pizza. Digger would be picky about it. He didn’t like green peppers. But he’d eat everything else, including the olives. For some unknown reason, Digger loved black olives. The pepperoni was a given, but the pepperoni here had garlic in it. He asked the server to have a small pizza made up with no sauce, cheese, or pepperoni. “Just vegetables, please, but no garlic, onions or green pepper. And lots of grilled chicken.” Digger would enjoy it, it wouldn’t be bad for him, and it would help extend the supply of dog food they could carry while on foot.
Without waiting to hear the uncle’s solution
to the kid’s problem, Rex left the café and gave Digger his ‘pizza’. Rex still found it bewildering to watch the dog every time he fed him. A meal which Rex would spend twenty to thirty minutes on to consume, Digger gulped down in less than thirty seconds with three to four bites, and then, most amazing of all, he would sit back, lick his lips, and look accusatory at Rex as if to say, ‘when are you going to feed me? I had nothing to eat all day’.
When the dog had finished, Rex rooted in Digger’s pannier-style backpack for his collapsible bowl and a bottle of water. Digger lapped the water gratefully.
When Rex had first planned to hike instead of driving in Peru, he’d wondered if Digger would allow the contraption. He needn’t have worried. It was like the harness Digger was used to, except that it had a soft cotton canvas bridge over his back with expandable side pockets attached. A sturdy handle allowed him to hold it while Digger stepped out when it was time to take it off, and provided a ring for a leash, which stayed in one of the pockets most of the time.
Rex had put it on him empty at first. When Digger didn’t seem to mind that, he started adding weight gradually, until the dog was carrying his own food, water, and toys. At the last minute, Rex had added the coms units and night-vision camera that fit on Digger’s regular harness. He didn’t anticipate trouble, but experience had taught him trouble seemed to find them anyway. In any case, Rex thought it was only fair for Digger to carry his share, and Digger seemed to agree.
The next order of business was a room, a shower, and a good night’s sleep in a real bed. Then he’d replenish their supplies and be on his way to Cuzco.
Two
THE NEXT DESTINATION on Rex’s agenda was Cusco, jumping off point for tourist attractions throughout the Sacred Valley. Rex wasn’t averse to using a guide, and in some cases, it was required. However, walking in a crowd of tourists wasn’t his style. Besides, he preferred to acclimate himself to the altitude gradually, by walking from village to village and the historical sites that fascinated him.
