Smaller branches absorbed some of the impact, but they also ripped through his clothes, cutting him in several places. He jerked his head sideways just in time to avoid being blinded by one stub, the wood slashing a line across his cheek.
Crackles from above. The creepers were tearing apart. He tried to find a secure handhold, but the branches he clutched all broke under his weight.
He fell again – and hit a twist in the crooked trunk, bouncing off and landing in the overgrown marsh with a thick splash. Despite the pain, he crawled back towards the tree, pushing through the undergrowth.
Above, the two soldiers reached the broken wall and looked into the jungle. Birds whirled madly through the branches, leaves dropping like green snowflakes from the still shaking tree. No sign of the escaped prisoner.
Stikes pushed them aside. ‘Give me that!’ he barked, snatching the AK from one of the men. He aimed it into the tree, seeing no sign of his former subordinate, then down at the ground.
Movement in the bushes—
Stikes opened fire as Eddie scrambled for cover. Bullets thunked into the tree, bark and splinters spitting from each impact. But his target was now hunched against the other side of the trunk, shielded by over two feet of wood. Stikes fired the last rounds in the magazine, then irritably thrust the AK into its owner’s hands. ‘Get back to Callas.’
The other soldier still had his weapon fixed on the tree. ‘We can climb down and get him.’
‘No,’ Stikes said. ‘We need to get the sun disc out of here. Come on.’ He headed back down the alley, retrieving his Jericho. The soldiers followed.
Eddie sat breathlessly behind the tree, wondering if his pursuers had their weapons trained on his hiding place, waiting for him to emerge. After a minute, he risked a peek. Nobody above. They had gone.
Aching, he stood, trying to work out the quickest way to get back into the ruins. Scaling the cliff was out; from here, he would have to go almost halfway round the entire perimeter. He limped away, hearing the rumble of the helicopter drawing closer to the lost city.
‘Did you kill him?’ Callas called as Stikes and the soldiers returned to the plaza.
‘No. He got away,’ the Englishman replied.
‘You let him escape?’
‘He won’t go far, not as long as we have them.’ Stikes gestured at the prisoners, who apart from the wounded Becker had been forced back to work. ‘He’ll try to rescue them. I’d advise that we leave before then.’
A faintly dismissive sneer crossed Callas’s lips. ‘You’re afraid of him?’
‘Not in the slightest,’ Stikes snapped, wiping the blood from his mouth. ‘But if we leave him behind, there are only two towns he can reach from here – and you can have men waiting for him at both.’ He regarded the blood-spattered sun disc, which had been lifted back upright on the cart. ‘How long before the chopper can pick it up?’
‘A few minutes.’
‘Good. Send two men to guard the trucks – he might try to hijack or sabotage them. The rest, tell them to help load the sun disc as quickly as they can. The moment it leaves the ground, we’ll evacuate.’
The Venezuelan stiffened slightly at being given orders by his employee, but nevertheless called out instructions. Two of his men ran for the main gate, the others doing what they could to speed the golden disc’s laborious progress. Before long, it reached the waiting crate; a few more minutes of straining, and it was safely in the container. By now, the Mil was hovering directly over the clearing, lowering cables. Soldiers attached the steel lines to the crate as the others forced the prisoners back at gunpoint. Another minute, and a man signalled to Callas that it was ready.
‘Take it up!’ the general shouted impatiently, waving to the helicopter.
The Mi-17 increased power to full, engines screaming as they took the extra load. The crate lurched from the ground. For a moment it seemed as though it would get no higher, swaying pendulously a few inches above the flagstones; then it slowly began to rise.
Callas watched in satisfaction as the helicopter lifted its precious cargo higher. The crate cleared the trees, then the Mil turned lethargically northwest, heading for the military base. Aircraft and cargo disappeared from view behind the jungle canopy.
It was now Stikes’s turn to be impatient. ‘Time to go,’ he said. His gaze fell on the prisoners. ‘What about them?’
‘We take them with us,’ said Callas. ‘I don’t want anyone to know we were here.’
‘All the bullet holes you’ve left in the place might give it away,’ Nina said scathingly. ‘And all the gear you’ve left behind - as well as Flat Stanley there.’ She nodded towards the gory spot where the luckless soldier had been squashed beneath the sun disc.
‘I will send more men to collect them later,’ the general replied as he started for the gate, signalling his men to bring the explorers. Becker was half carried, half dragged by two soldiers. ‘And a bullet hole is a bullet hole. Anyone could have made them at any time. But the bodies of archaeologists known to be in the country on a particular date . . . that would be harder to explain if they were found here.’ A sadistic hardness entered his voice. ‘But where you are going, you will never be found.’
Despite her outward defiance, a chill of fear ran through Nina’s soul.
Eddie climbed back up the outer wall where he had first entered the city, warily surveying the buildings below before scrambling down the ruined stairway and heading for the plaza. He was on full alert, certain that Callas’s men would be searching for him - which made the absence of any guards all the more disconcerting as he crept through the alleys.
He peered over a wall at the plaza. Nobody was there. The soldiers, Callas and Stikes were gone. So were Nina and the other expedition members.
And the sun disc.
Callas had what he came for – the golden god-image had been taken away by the helicopter. He vaulted the wall and hurried across the plaza. Tracks in the dirt led to the main gate - and the smaller prints of women’s boots amongst them showed that Nina, Macy and Loretta were still alive. Callas presumably had some reason for not wanting their bodies to be found at Paititi, but Eddie was certain that he still intended to kill them. He would be taking them somewhere he could be sure they wouldn’t be found. Where?
The military base. A restricted area in the depths of the jungle, what few visitors it might get deterred by barbed wire and bullets. Once Nina and the others entered, they would never leave.
He ran for the gate. As he cleared the ancient walls, he heard something over the noise of birds and insects: a low grumble. Engines.
Receding. The trucks were already heading away down the logging track.
‘Shit!’ He stopped, forcing back his anger, trying to think. There was only one road, and it took a long and circuitous route back to Valverde and the spur leading to the base. It would take a couple of hours for Callas’s convoy to get there. The base itself was about five miles to the northwest . . .
Eddie already knew there was only one course of action he could take.
He raised his wrist, turning in place until the hour hand of his watch pointed at the sun. South, he knew from his military training, was exactly halfway between the hour hand and the twelve o’clock position on the watch face. With that established, it only took a moment to work out which way was northwest. One last look after the vehicles carrying his wife and friends, then he set off at a run into the trees.
14
The bumpy drive from the ruins took two hours, Nina and the others sweating in the back of the troop truck. Ahead and behind it were the Land Cruisers. Kit and Valero looked after Becker, while Macy tried, with limited success, to comfort the weeping, terrified Loretta. Nina’s fleeting thoughts of leaping over the tailgate to escape into the jungle were tempered by the AK-103s pointed at her companions – and the presence of Cuff’s body. Loretta’s hysteria at the sight had forced the soldiers to cover it, but the huddled shape was a constant reminder of Callas’s ruthlessn
ess.
She knew he would display that trait again soon enough. The general’s greed had convinced him to keep her alive – for the moment – in the hope she could lead him to even greater riches . . . but he had no cause to spare the others. They had witnessed his plundering of Paititi, something he wanted to keep secret even after successfully completing his ‘operation’.
They would have to be silenced.
The little convoy turned off the road to Valverde on to a narrower, even rougher track. A warning sign read Prohibida La Entrada: Zona Militar. Callas’s domain, a private kingdom. Here, he could do whatever he wanted to his prisoners, and nobody would ever know.
The truck slowed. Nina looked ahead, seeing a chain-link fence topped with coils of razor wire stretching into the vine-draped trees to each side. A soldier opened a gate to let the vehicles through. They rumbled on for a short way before emerging in a large rectangular space bulldozed out of the jungle.
The military base.
The Mi-17 was parked on a concrete helipad, being refuelled. The crate containing the Inca treasure rested beside it. At the facility’s heart was a giant rectangular radar antenna, aimed towards the Colombian border. The rest of the base was less imposing: an assortment of prefabricated control and administration huts, and tents for the troops luckless enough to be stationed in the sweltering green hell.
The lead Land Cruiser stopped beside the helipad, Callas getting out to check the crate. The other two vehicles pulled up behind it. Stikes emerged from the second Toyota and strolled to the truck. ‘Everyone comfortable in there?’ he asked mockingly.
‘For God’s sake,’ said Nina, indicating Becker’s injured leg, ‘he needs a doctor.’
‘At least give him something for the pain,’ Kit added.
‘He’ll get something for the pain soon enough, don’t worry.’ Stikes looked away at a distant noise. ‘Ah! Excellent timing. My new toy has arrived.’
Nina followed his gaze. Off to the southwest was the dot of an approaching helicopter – two helicopters, she realised, picking out a smaller one flying alongside.
Callas joined Stikes by the truck. ‘I wasn’t actually sure this friend of yours could live up to his promises,’ Stikes said to him. ‘For once, I’m pleased to be wrong.’
The Venezuelan spat. ‘Pachac is no friend of mine. Maoist scum! If I could do this without him – or that drug-dealing pig, de Quesada – I would, but I need their money. For now, at least. After we succeed, I think I will change the deal. It is time Venezuela was . . . cleaned.’
‘Well, if you need my services again, you have my card,’ said Stikes. Callas smiled darkly, then watched the helicopters.
Valero frowned as they neared, puzzled. ‘What is it?’ Nina asked.
‘The big helicopter – it is a gunship, Russian. You yanquis call them Hinds.’ Nina looked more closely as the two choppers prepared to land. The subject of Valero’s confusion was, she suspected, every bit as deadly as it was ugly, stubby wings bearing rocket pods and a huge multi-barrelled cannon beneath its nose. ‘We have them here in Venezuela – but this one is from Peru.’
‘Peru?’ Now it was Nina’s turn to be bewildered. ‘But that’s Colombia over there. Peru’s four hundred miles away.’
‘I know. And this Pachac, I have heard of him. He is a communist revolutionary, but a dangerous one, a killer – even the Shining Path threw him out. He is also a drug lord.’
‘Sounds like a nice guy,’ said Macy.
‘If he has got a gunship, that is bad. If he has brought it to my country to give to mercenaries, that is worse! I do not like this.’
‘You’re not the only one,’ said Nina. The Hind moved over the pad, blowing dust and grit in all directions as it touched down beside the Mil, tripod landing gear compressing under its armoured weight. The smaller helicopter, a civilian Jet Ranger, followed suit.
A man climbed from the Jet Ranger, bending low beneath the still spinning rotors even though his short stature meant he was in no danger of decapitation. Like Stikes, he wore a military beret, this one blood-red. Giving the Hind an almost longing look, he approached Callas and Stikes.
‘Ah, Inkarrí!’ cried Callas, suddenly exuding warmth and friendliness towards the new arrival, who responded with similar, not entirely sincere, enthusiasm. He was not of Hispanic descent, instead having the broad features of a native Indian. While far from tall, he had a powerful chest and muscular arms, his sun-weathered skin showing that his physique was the result of long outdoor labour rather than a gym. The two men briefly conversed in Spanish, then Callas switched to English. ‘Alexander Stikes, meet Arcani Pachac.’
Stikes and Pachac shook hands. ‘The mercenary,’ said the Peruvian with vague disapproval.
‘I simply provide a service,’ said Stikes. ‘Once the job’s done, I leave. Quick, clean and efficient, with no messy differences of ideology to cause problems afterwards.’ A hint of a smile. ‘So, how are your relations with the Shining Path at the moment?’
Pachac’s eyes widened with anger. ‘Do not mention those traitors! Counter-revolutionary bastards!’
‘Well, should you need help to clean house after overthrowing the bourgeois imperialist puppets in Lima,’ said the Englishman, still amused, ‘give me a call. In the meantime, I’d like to check the general’s new acquisition.’ Pachac nodded, and Stikes marched to the Hind. Its pilot – a Caucasian – climbed out and saluted him, then took him on an inspection tour of the gunship.
Pachac’s reluctance to give up the helicopter was clear. ‘The damage we could do if we could make its weapons work again! I would give you back your money, and more.’ Revolutionary fervour faded, replaced by businesslike pragmatism. ‘But speaking of money . . . ’
Callas signalled to a waiting soldier, who lugged a pair of canvas holdalls, one large, one small, to the two men. ‘Here. The rest of your payment. Two million US dollars, in cash.’
The Peruvian opened the large bag, revealing bundles of banknotes. ‘I’m sure Chairman Mao would be proud,’ Nina muttered.
Pachac heard her, and glared up at the truck’s occupants. ‘Who are these yanquis?’
‘Prisoners,’ said Callas. ‘Don’t worry about them, they will not be here for long. And speaking of prisoners, I have a gift for you, Inkarrí. Two gifts, in fact. I think you will like them both.’ He gave an order to the soldier, and the man jogged away to a nearby hut. By the time Pachac had satisfied himself that the holdall contained everything due to him, the soldier was returning with a comrade, between them hauling a third man, a bound civilian with a bloodied face.
Even through his swollen, purpled eyes he saw Pachac, and gasped in fright, trying to break free. One of the soldiers punched him. The two men dropped him at their commander’s feet.
Pachac clapped in cruel delight. ‘Cayo! Ah, Cayo, it has been a while since I last saw you.’ His voice became a snarl. ‘Since you betrayed me. Since you stole half a million dollars of my drugs and gave them to de Quesada, along with your loyalty.’ He kicked the helpless man in the chest. ‘You shit!’
‘He was caught crossing the border with two others,’ said Callas. ‘And ten kilos of cocaine. He tried to pass himself off as one of your smugglers, but used an old password. So my men arrested him.’
‘The others?’
A shrug. ‘They had unfortunate accidents. They will never be found.’
‘And the cocaine?’
‘Confiscated, of course. Venezuela does not tolerate drug smugglers. Ones who don’t pay, anyway.’
Pachac looked at the nearby soldiers. ‘Are all the men on this base . . . yours?’
Callas nodded. ‘They are all loyal to me, yes. You may do what you wish with this man.’
‘Very good.’ Pachac crouched beside Cayo and produced a folding knife, opening it with a loud metallic snick. The man jerked up his head, whimpering in fear. ‘Yes, you know that noise, don’t you? You have heard it before when I have dealt with traitors.’ He was still speaking in E
nglish, glancing up at Nina and the others as if revelling in the opportunity to perform for a new audience. Cayo wailed and begged for mercy, but Pachac shoved him down on to his back. ‘Now, I will deal with you!’
Even with her hands over her eyes, Loretta still screamed at the sound of Pachac stabbing the knife deep into Cayo’s torso just below his sternum. His cries became an almost animalistic screech as the blade sawed down his body. Blood gushed from the lengthening wound.
Pachac worked the knife to the struggling man’s waistband, then sharply withdrew it. ‘And now,’ he said, with almost some twisted form of reverence, ‘capacocha.’
Osterhagen was too revolted to look, but still reacted to the word with shock. ‘My God . . . ’
‘What does it mean?’ asked the equally appalled Nina.
‘It is the Inca ritual . . . of human sacrifice.’
Empire of Gold Page 19
