by WW Mortensen
Before the lift fell too far, Ed leapt desperately for the ledge above. He caught hold, but only just—one hand slipped off before he consolidated his grip.
For Rebecca, the jump was too high, but lucky for her, Oliveira reacted quickly. Grasping her around the waist with one hand and releasing the grappling hook strapped to his leg with the other, he aimed and fired upwards in the one swift movement.
The steel claw looped over the shaft’s lip. Somewhere beyond, it must have found purchase, because there was a sudden, jolting tug. With a sickening lurch, the lift sank from beneath Rebecca’s feet, and then she and Oliveira were in mid-air, trailing at the end of the hook’s nylon rope and swinging towards the wall. She braced for the impact, but the collision was minor.
Shadows swallowed the platform below.
Rebecca gazed uncertainly at Oliveira. “That’s the second time today you’ve saved me. Thank you.”
Oliveira said nothing in reply.
Working his toes into the many cracks in the wall’s worn surface, Ed scrambled over the ledge and stretched down to them. “Bec, give me your hand.”
Rebecca reached up and Ed hoisted her to the ledge with a loud grunt, grasping her belt to help her over the lip. Once safely topside, Rebecca joined Ed in extending her hand for Oliveira. As she did, she searched the vertical passage for signs of movement. She saw none.
With a united heave, they hauled Oliveira clear of the hole. As soon as he was free, he stood and urged them to take cover. Bringing the FH-9 to bear, he sent a burst of flame back down the shaft.
Nothing emerged from the blackness.
Shifting her attention, Rebecca turned in a circle to take in her new surroundings. They were, as suspected, inside the temple that sat at the top of the pyramid. Two sides of the square-shaped structure—the western and eastern—were totally walled in save for an open doorway in the middle of each, while a series of narrowly spaced columns was all that formed the northern and southern sides. From all four boundaries, steep staircases ran to the base of the pyramid, one each at the foot of both doorways and the other two from between the central columns of the northern and southern sides. Though it was late afternoon and almost dark, Rebecca saw waves of silver-grey silk spreading into the jungle on all sides. What she couldn’t see—which may or may not have been a good thing—were any of the web’s inhabitants.
For the moment, however, her attention was fixed mainly on the temple itself. While the interior was essentially a large and empty space—for some reason, the jungle had not reclaimed it—two features stood out. First, the walls, columns, and ceiling were all a reflective charcoal colour, the same smooth, dark alloy as the sphere beneath the pyramid. The other feature to capture Rebecca’s eye was not only the temple’s most dominant attribute, but perhaps its reason for being.
In the middle of the temple floor, about fifteen feet from the off-centre shaft, stood a large moai. Its arms were not by its sides like other moai, but above its head, holding something high. An object—
—a gift from the gods—
A sphere.
It was like the sphere in the chamber beneath the pyramid, only in miniature, perhaps no more than a foot across. And like its larger cousin, it quivered in the moai’s cupped hands. The cycle was identical: every few seconds, the orb would pulse, the smooth, dark alloy intensifying into a ball of glaring orange, its crackling energy sizzling between the crystal rods that protruded from its surface.
It occurred to Rebecca that Ed knew nothing of the larger sphere below. Equally, he knew nothing of her theories about it, and as he caught sight of the object now, his jaw dropped. He stumbled towards the moai, searching for words.
“Oh my God… what…?”
Oliveira, meanwhile, seemed wholly unimpressed by this new discovery. Having shed his pack in favour of the flamethrower, he moved to the open western doorway and squinted into the silk. “We cannot delay,” he said to Rebecca, transferring his gaze downwards. “I say we take the northern steps to the base of the pyramid and the plaza out in front. Then we take the tunnel he used”—he jutted his chin at Ed, still mesmerised by the sphere—“to get back to the burrow and crawl the hell out of here.”
“Have you forgotten?” Rebecca asked. “They flooded the tunnel. There’s no getting through.”
Oliveira resumed guard at the shaft. “You have a better idea? We cannot stay here.”
Rebecca opened her mouth to reply but cut herself off. At first, the noise sounded like thunder rumbling distantly, but it was too rhythmic, too sustained to be that, and grew steadily in volume.
Whump-whump-whump…
It was more like…
No way! A helicopter! Perhaps even more than one, approaching from the north-west—
With a sudden burst of static, Oliveira’s radio—lying on the ground amongst his discarded gear—crackled to life.
Rebecca immediately recognised the female voice at the end of it.
In a flurry of motion, two hands snatched for the radio. Rebecca’s was the quickest.
She grasped the handset, lifting it and backing from Oliveira in the one action. He didn’t pursue her.
The voice came again.
Rebecca spoke into the mouthpiece. “Hello? Jess, is that you?” What the hell was Jessy doing with a radio?
The line was full of static.
“…Bec? Oh, thank God, finally… I’ve… trying… some time now… some kind… interference. Look, I shouldn’t be on this frequency, and we don’t have much time—”
“Tell me about it,” Rebecca said, eyeing Oliveira. “What’s with the chopper?”
“…are…y… okay? …can you talk?… Ed with you?”
Rebecca glanced at Ed, who was studying the moai intently. “Ed’s here. He’s fine. We’re both fine.” She looked back at Oliveira. “And yes, I can talk. Tell me that chopper is for us.”
“…ank God… but tell him… still… my bad books for what he did—”
“Jess! The chopper?”
“Sorry—yes… two of them.” A pause. “Bec, there’s a… goddamned team of Green Berets here…”
Rebecca’s eyes hadn’t left Oliveira, who was standing and listening. “What? Say again?”
“..o time to explain, Bec. But it’s all good… tell you the truth, I didn’t expect you’d be… one to answer the radio yourself. But I had to put in the call anyway—take that chance… In a matter of minutes, we’re out of here.” Another pause filled with static. “So… what happened… Oliveira and his men?”
Again, Rebecca eyed Oliveira, trying to read him before answering. There was something about the way he returned the look, something in his eyes…
“Don’t worry about them. It’s under control,” Rebecca said, her voice even.
“…at’s great news, Bec. Thank God.” Despite the bad connection, Rebecca could hear the joy in Jessy’s voice. “I have to go… one of the choppers will be heading your way shortly… where… you exactly?”
“We’re up in the temple. Get the chopper to pick us up there. Oh, and Jess? Tell it to hurry. Things are heating up.”
• • •
Back at Advance Base Camp, Jessy was beaming. It was almost too good to be true. Ed and Rebecca were alive!
She lifted the radio. “Will do, Bec,” she said. “Just hang in there, okay? Can you believe it? This is almost over! Finally, we’re going home!”
Still smiling, she released the talk button just as someone burst into the tent behind her, wiping the expression from her face.
87
Rebecca pocketed the radio, glancing sideways at Ed before shifting her gaze back to Oliveira. Her hand crept to the Kalashnikov slung over her shoulder. Tensed, she waited for Oliveira’s reaction to the news he’d obviously lost the camp—and his men—in some sort of incursion by a team of Green Berets. American soldiers! She hardly knew what to make of it herself.
“They will need to extract you from the roof,” Oliveira said. “You should start
climbing.”
Rebecca looked at him joylessly, relaxing her grip on the weapon. “I can tell them you helped us escape. Better still, that you’re one of the hired hands. They don’t need to know otherwise.”
“Get moving. I will stand guard.”
“You can’t stay here.”
“What? Come with you? Ask for the same mercy they must have showed my men? Go on, get moving.”
Rebecca turned to Ed, who looked up from the moai and shrugged.
The sound of the approaching choppers grew louder. Rebecca looked once more at Oliveira, and then moved to the columns of the temple’s northern wall to watch for them.
• • •
A moment later she turned back and reached into her pocket.
“You gave this up too easily,” she said, retrieving the small cloth package and tossing it to Oliveira, who caught it. “I’m guessing it’s not the real reason you came here.”
“Bec!” Ed said.
Rebecca was unfazed. “We don’t need it anymore, Ed, and something tells me it’s worthless, in any case.”
Oliveira shook his head, half-smirked, then—as if to prove her wrong—unwrapped the cloth bag. Easing open the drawstring, he tipped the contents into his open palm. Like a sparkling waterfall, the load fell glittering through the light of his glowstick.
Diamonds.
Cut diamonds. Lots of them.
Rebecca stared at the gems in Oliveira’s cupped hand. They were beautiful. Entrancing, even. “Pretty,” she said. “But I know you didn’t risk Ed’s life, and ours, for a bunch of stones.”
“Eight million US dollars’ worth of stones,” Oliveira said without looking up, careful not to spill the precious load as he returned it to the pouch. “And yes, I did risk you for them.”
“Maybe you risked my life and Ed’s, even your men’s. But you wouldn’t risk your own for that. You came here for something else, I know you did. Answers, perhaps? Answers for your employer… or… for yourself?” She paused and stared him boldly in the eye. “Why is that plane out there, stuck in the web?”
Again, Oliveira half-smirked, but this time Rebecca sensed the fight had all but fled him.
“You are not unlike her,” Oliveira said. “I will give you that. You have courage, senhorita.”
“Who are you talking about?”
Oliveira held out the pouch. “Two years ago, my employer’s brother took these diamonds and that plane and disappeared. But he took more than that. He took his lady as well.”
Ed raised an eyebrow. “What… his girlfriend? The guy pinched eight million dollars from his brother, and his girlfriend, too?”
“They fell in love.”
“And the diamonds were to fund their new life together,” Rebecca reasoned. “And so, when you heard about the plane, your boss sent you here to search for the diamonds, but more importantly, for closure. To find out what befell his brother. And his girlfriend.” She studied Oliveira. “You knew her, didn’t you?”
“She was my sister.”
With that, everything fell into place. Now, Rebecca understood Oliveira’s erratic behaviour and his persistent interrogation of Ed. This wasn’t about diamonds or missing planes or even forbidden love.
Oliveira had been searching for his sibling, pure and simple.
“As I told you earlier… there was no-one inside,” Ed said softly. “The plane was empty.”
Oliveira nodded and looked back at Rebecca. “Fortunately for you, senhorita, it was never my intention to leave you here. There is much about you that reminds me of her—not least your tendency to speak your mind—and it is no habit of mine to abandon a woman to suffering. I was not about to let them… those things… take another.”
Rebecca wasn’t sure how to respond. The sudden sting of tears surprised her, and she turned away, back to the columns. Beyond them, it was near-dark—the horizon smeared only by a faint purple smudge—and off in the direction of the north-western vantage point, twin spotlights bounced over the canopy.
The choppers had arrived.
88
Cartana was nervous.
Never had he felt comfortable in De Sousa’s presence; in fact, he’d thought the man nothing short of crazy. This confirmed it.
Hunched low and creeping silently, he followed De Sousa through the darkened jungle. Frogs and insects croaked and chirped all around them.
It had been De Sousa’s intention to launch a surprise attack on the camp, but moments ago, upon hearing the radio transmission between the two women, he’d altered the plan. Cartana was glad for it, but he remained uneasy.
He glanced at the yard-long tube slung diagonally across De Sousa’s shoulders. The Russian-made RPG-7 rocket launcher, though old, was still a devastating weapon.
De Sousa turned. “Stop lagging. Hurry!”
Not wanting to anger his companion, Cartana scrambled to catch up, juggling the three warheads like a child with bowling-pins.
Some distance north of the pyramid—and east of the place the Americans had dubbed the north-western vantage point—De Sousa found what he was looking for. The position was sufficiently elevated and offered a suitable break in the canopy.
“Perfect,” De Sousa said, smiling. He dragged Cartana to his side.
The two men hunkered low and waited.
• • •
It was a long time before Sanchez—still up to his neck in water—dared emerge from his hiding place amongst the boulders. When he did, he was deathly quiet, dragging a lucid Owen silently behind him. He moved from the bank where the spiders had been, glancing back at the torch. He considered retrieving it, although it looked virtually spent.
Forget it.
At the edge of the lake, the narrow stream he’d discovered earlier snaked up the bank and into a cluster of boulders.
He and Owen moved towards it.
89
Jessy sat quietly at the north-western vantage point, proverbial tail between her legs. At her feet lay her rucksack. In her arms, a silent Priscilla hid her face against Jessy’s chest.
Aronsohn stood off to the left.
Upon catching her transmission, the soldiers guarding Advance Base Camp had burst into her tent and commandeered the radio. Of course, by then the ‘damage’ had been done, and their only recourse had been to usher her to the exfiltration site. While Aronsohn hadn’t personally confronted her about the breach, he’d clearly been displeased by it. Now, he seemed in a rush.
Jessy hated that she’d broken his trust. In many ways, she would have preferred a lambasting to the silent treatment she was getting from him now. Still, she’d done what she’d had to do, and the gamble had paid off. They now knew Ed and Rebecca’s exact location.
A heavy, rhythmic thumping caused her to glance up through the canopy.
Skimming the treetops, their twin spotlights cutting through the near-dark, the two choppers cruised into view, sleek and black against the dimming sky. Jessy’s heart skipped a beat. Everything had happened so fast. Hell… not only had she discovered that Ed and Rebecca were alive and well, but the rescue choppers, as promised, were here. Somehow, they were going to survive this!
She watched the huge machines swing into position, the vegetation above her head convulsing wildly. Aronsohn had chosen the north-western vantage point as the exfiltration site because the trees here weren’t as dense, topping out at about eighty feet compared to a hundred and fifty back at Advance Base Camp. Even so, it was too dense for a landing.
A voice crackled over Aronsohn’s radio, above the swooshing trees and whumping chopper-blades. “Echo One—we’re coming up on your position now.”
Aronsohn glanced at Hoya and jutted his chin. “Tag, pop it.”
With a nod, Tag removed a steel canister from his vest, pulled the pin, and tossed it to the ground. Yellow smoke poured from emission holes at either end of the device, expanding upwards into the rustling canopy. The choppers beat the air in a deafening wave.
“Raven One—you
got that?” Aronsohn called above the din.
“Roger that, Echo One. Yellow?”
“That’s the one. Listen, the jungle’s too dense here. You’ll need the Penetrator.”
“Roger that, Echo One. How many injured? Just the one civilian?”
Aronsohn glanced at Jessy. “Negative, Raven One. Two injured, three in total.”
There was a pause. “Say again, Echo One? You’ve now got two injured civilians?”
Still eyeing Jessy, Aronsohn tossed her a wink. “Just get a Penetrator down here, will you? We’ve got a short trip to make.”
• • •
The bright-yellow Forest Penetrator whizzed through the canopy at more than six feet a second. Weighted to pierce the dense vegetation, the three-foot-long cylinder slowed as it neared the forest floor, swaying at the end of the steel cable that dangled from the winch above the UH-60 Black Hawk’s starboard door. Aronsohn caught hold of it, and aided by Staff Sergeant Kriedemann and Sergeant Jenkins, released the three narrow seats from their retracted positions and snapped them into place. Once they’d slipped into the webbing safety straps, the three men were hauled topside.
It was imperative Aronsohn appraise the temple situation personally. It was never his intention to abandon the two civilians trapped inside the pyramid, but he wouldn’t risk a crew without a first-hand assessment. By Jessy’s own admission, her colleague, Rebecca, had been forced into the pyramid against her will, and there was every chance that during their earlier radio conversation, Rebecca had been speaking at gunpoint. He was wary of an ambush.
Even so, once safely aboard, he gave the order and Raven One peeled away, heading in the direction of the pyramid just as Raven Two swung in behind to extract Jessy and the rest of the team.
• • •
Standing between the narrowly spaced columns of the temple’s northern side, Rebecca fired the aerial mini-flare skyward. The black shape of the chopper grew larger as it nosed to the east and then banked in a looping arc back to the south, towards them, spotlights blazing.
