“Come on, Jenny, let’s get you out of here, shall we?” Stark said, crouching down beside the door to her cage.
He didn’t hear the poacher moving up behind him, until he noticed the haunting snick of the safety being nudged out of place, and the way Jenny’s head came up in sudden panic.
Stark threw himself to his left, hit the ground hard on his shoulder and rolled, coming up as the poacher’s bullet missed, tearing into the air where his head had been a split-second before.
He squeezed off a single shot, hitting the man squarely in the chest. His eyes flared saucer-wide in shock, then the light that was his life went out. He was dead before he hit the ground.
“Next time a little warning would be nice,” he said to Jenny as he fumbled with the lock to her cage, trying each of the various keys he had stolen until the tumblers fell into place and the mechanism clicked open.
He dragged the door of the steel cage open as Jenny crawled forward, and then helped her out. She needed his support to keep her legs from buckling.
“There’s three unaccounted for,” he said. “If you see anything, don’t be afraid to yell, okay? By this time, they know I’m here.”
She nodded.
“Good, come on then. We’re going home.”
“What about the others?”
He knew what she meant. She could play all the mind games her sex liked to play, but when it came right down to it what she was asking was, “What about Cutter?”
“Cutter’s going to make sure they finish what they came here for. Right now, my only concern is getting you and Cam Bairstow back to England in one piece.”
“And the poachers? Are you just going to leave them to carry on when we’re gone?”
He closed his eyes.
He really wished she hadn’t said that.
“What would you have me do? Hunt them down and kill them, one at a time?”
“If necessary,” Jenny said. There was a coldness to her voice that he found utterly chilling.
“I’m not going to do it,” he said. “We didn’t come here to solve the illegal trafficking of endangered species, we came here to bring a boy back to his father, and deal with whatever escaped from this rift in... Christ I can’t even bring myself to say it, it’s so ridiculous.”
“I know. I still don’t claim to understand it, but I know what I believe, and I believe in Cutter. The rest is icing on the cake,” she said, and he knew she meant it. “A multi-billion pound trade, Stark. These aren’t good people.”
“So that means they deserve to die? That we stand as judge, jury and executioner?” It was absurdly hypocritical to be arguing about it, with four men lying dead between them and the way out. “Deal with Eberhardt when you get home. Freeze his assets. Seize his properties. Bankrupt him. Do whatever it is you do. You’ve got the power of the entire British government behind you. He doesn’t stand a chance.
“But here and now, you don’t need to do this. Honestly, you don’t. You can go after him and every one of his business associates. He’s finished, he just doesn’t know it yet. There’s no need to stoop to his level. You’re better than that. I know you are.”
She faltered then. Whatever hurt they had done to her was slipping away as she realised that she didn’t have the right to demand their deaths. She wasn’t that person. Stark was right, and he could tell that she knew it.
“Take me home,” she said weakly.
Slipping her arm around his shoulder, he carried her back toward civilisation.
“You smell terrible,” she said, refusing to look down at the bodies as they passed them.
“Next time I come to rescue you, I’ll remember to take a shower first,” Stark replied.
“Let’s hope there won’t be a next time, shall we?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
TWENTY-SIX
The march over ten kilometres beneath the rising sun felt like a slow journey through Dante’s circles of the Inferno.
They made the ascent with precious little water and almost no food, because the majority of their supplies had been left behind in the crashed Land Rover. Still they travelled toward the ruined temple, staring at it on the horizon as though it were the door to Mephistopheles’ inner sanctum.
There was no banter. Dry lips and dehydrated thoughts crumbled the words away to silence. When the foliage masked the temple itself from sight, Cutter looked up at the sky whenever he could, fixing their point geographically by triangulating it with the temple mount and another distant peak.
Cam hadn’t mentioned the mountain when he’d described finding the temple. Neither had Nando. It was the kind of thing that would have been good to know about.
The straps of his pack cut into his shoulders and the sweat gathered at the base of his spine, runnels dribbling down the backs of his legs as he scuffed through the undergrowth. He squinted up at the sun again. In an hour it would be at its zenith. In an hour they’d either be inside, or flat out on their backs with heat stroke.
He stopped walking. For a moment the grasses around him continued to swish with the subtle ghost of movement, then it came again, a soft ripple of motion in the leaves of some of the dour trees running parallel with them as they climbed.
He breathed deeply, dreading the presence of an unwanted fragrance.
He inhaled the aromas of the rainforest — pollens and the moist air. There wasn’t so much as a trace residue of any pungent reek that might have carried the beast’s pheromones.
Nevertheless, Cutter listened to the trees.
They weren’t alone.
He reached into his pocket for the small strip of rubber he’d cut away from the spare tyre, then stopped as his fingers closed around it. It was a pointless reflex; the beast wasn’t using pheromones to control the Thylacosmilus. There were no trail scents laid down for them to follow. No spores that would betray it.
He licked at his dry lips, scanning the shadows that lurked behind the closest trees.
Nothing.
There was nothing he could do but walk on.
The mountain betrayed them.
It was part of the ultimate optical illusion. The temple wasn’t on the same peak; rather there was a cleft that opened up into a vast chasm that fell away for hundreds of feet. The perspective of the uphill climb had hidden it from them.
Cutter stood before a fifty-foot-wide rope bridge that spanned the chasm. The ropes were supported on three poles, and fastened in such a way that they formed a ‘V’, a single rope to shuffle along with two guide ropes to help them balance as they crossed.
He leaned forward to peer down the sheer face of rock to the thin blue line of a river far below. The water no doubt flowed down to feed the Amazon, like a thousand other tributaries this far into the Andes. The thought wasn’t exactly comforting.
He leaned back away from the edge.
The ropes showed signs of fraying, but at almost two inches in diameter they would certainly hold the weight of even the heaviest of the group. That wasn’t what disturbed Cutter. It was the fact that once they were across the chasm, they were effectively cut off from any chance of escape. Isolated between bare rock and the anomaly, with nowhere to run if things went horribly wrong.
Cutter looked at Nando and Genaro. “Please tell me there’s another way?”
“There is,” Nando said.
“Thank God for that. Where is it?”
Nando pointed down into the chasm, drawing a line with his finger along the river.
“Well, that’s not exactly what I had in mind.”
“Then no, there isn’t another way. The bridge is safe. It has been here for hundreds of years. No, not the same rope,” he said, seeing Cutter’s dismay. “We replace it every year or so.”
“Why not build a proper bridge then?”
“Perhaps we could build a proper road as well? Or maybe a hotel?” Gone was Nando the cheerful, replaced by Nando the cynical.
Cutter made a rueful face. He had been well and truly
chastised.
He tested the rope, watching it ripple like a sine wave across the gap.
Every ten metres or so anchor ropes ran from the guide ropes down to the bottom one, to prevent a huge gap from widening under the weight of passage. It was a relatively simple feat of engineering. Right then he would have killed for a little more stability, though. There was no way they were going to be able to cart all of the equipment over to the other side.
“Who’s that trip-trapping over my bridge,” Connor chuckled, coming to stand beside him. He paled visibly as he peered down the vertiginous drop. “Yeah, okay, well, I think I’ll just stay on this side and offer moral support.”
“Thought you might,” Cutter said.
“I’m not a coward. I was just thinking, you know, you might want some back-up on this side, in case things go pear-shaped.” His face reflected a jumble of thoughts and emotions.
“Of course,” Cutter said, his smile taking the sting from the words. “All right, I’m thinking we’re going to need to go over one at a time.”
“Okay, I’ll go first,” Connor said, quickly.
“I thought you were going to stay on this side?”
“Yeah, well, I changed my mind,” he said. He stepped up, grasped the guide ropes in both hands, and stepped out over the chasm. The rope quivered beneath his feet as he edged forward.
“Careful,” Cutter said, needlessly.
“I can’t say I like this,” Connor called back, having shuffled forward another two feet. There were two inches of worn rope between him and a fatal drop. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.”
“Just keep going, and don’t look down,” Cutter encouraged. “Stephen, you next.”
Stephen nodded, and waited until Connor was twenty metres out, almost to the centre of the chasm. “What do you think?” He nodded toward the rope as Connor’s unsteady steps reverberated through its core. The exaggeration was enough that at one point the frayed rope looked like a snake lashing around, about to bite.
“It ought to hold,” Cutter said.
Once Connor had reached the other side, Stephen followed. He made considerably faster progress, and quickly reached his goal.
“Abby?” She nodded back at him. “Nando, will you and Genaro bring up the rear? I’m assuming you boys have crossed this bridge a time or two?”
Both rangers nodded. “Once a month, at least,” Genaro confirmed.
“Good. Okay, Abby, over you go.”
Cutter waited his turn, then stepped out on the rope. He tried to follow his own advice, but with the crisp wind caressing his face and the whistle of it in his ears, it was impossible. He looked down, and immediately regretted it as the rope lurched out from under him. Panicking, he over-compensated, pushing back too far against the movement of the rope beneath him. His foot slid off, and for a moment he was balanced precariously, knuckles white with fear, staring down at a 300-foot drop.
And then he slipped.
His foot dropped off the roll of the rope and he fell, his body plummeting like a stone. The momentum almost tore his arms from their sockets, as he hung out over nothing, arms wide in the classic crucifixion pose.
The rope dug into his crotch.
He could hear them screaming his name, but he couldn’t think about anything other than the pain, and holding onto the guide ropes. He tried to think, his mind racing. Fire burned through the muscles of his shoulders and across his collarbone as he fought to hold his grip.
He couldn’t pull himself up. It was impossible. There was no way he could get his feet back under him and stand, not with the rope whipping and lashing wildly beneath him.
All he could do was let go — in a minute. Less.
There was no way he could hold on.
He felt his palms grease with the cold sweat of fear. His shoulder collapsed, the ball joint wrenching out of place. With a scream of raw terror he dropped another three feet abruptly, the base rope slicing up between his legs so forcefully that it almost flipped him and sent him spinning out into the chasm.
A huge wave of black agony threatened to swarm over him as he wrestled with the ropes, trying to get a better hold. As he twisted, he could see Nando working his way along the rope to try and help him. He had lashed his belt over one of the guide ropes, but even that would offer little in the way of security if Cutter’s frantic scrabbling whipped the rope out from under his feet. He was forced to stop.
“Come on! Come on!” Cutter yelled at himself, trying to heave his body even a couple of inches upwards, but the damage to his shoulder made it impossible.
He closed his eyes, trying to gather himself, digging down into a well of courage and strength — and no little fear — that he didn’t know he possessed. Behind his eyes he saw her face, her smile, that look in her eyes.
It was cold, the wind cutting into his belly because his shirt had thrust up around his ears, and yet it was still blisteringly hot beneath the naked sun. Sweat greased his straining muscles, tricking down into his ears and into his eyes.
Cutter gritted his teeth against the pain. His breath came in short ragged gasps, his lips curled back from his teeth like some rabid dog straining at the leash. It took everything he had not to simply surrender, to let go and fall.
Raging against the fire in his damaged shoulder, Cutter brought his right leg up slowly, straining against the rope as it tried to get away from him. His arms trembled violently, sending vicious shockwaves down the length of the guide ropes. He managed, somehow, to curl his foot beneath the base rope and hook it around the worn fibres.
And just in time.
His shoulder gave out and he fell with shocking speed, swinging out backwards. Everything in his pockets, his gun, the torch, the strip of cut rubber, the oil, coins, keys, the goggles from the strap around his neck, fell away, spinning out into the nothingness that stretched between him and the ground.
He swung helplessly from his ankle, a huge pendulum suspended over the deepest of pits.
“Hold on, Professor!” Nando cried. Somehow he hadn’t lost his balance when the rope had ripped away from under Cutter as he fell back. He rushed along it now with all the alacrity of a blind acrobat.
“There’s not much else I can do!” Cutter rasped, trying to haul himself back up, trying not to look down, and trying to do anything but throw up as the world shifted violently beneath his head. Everything was twisting and spinning.
Gritting his teeth, Cutter rocked back, trying to build the momentum he needed to swing forward far enough and snag the rope. It slipped between his fingers. He forced himself to do it again, not daring to look at anything except the part of the rope he was trying to catch, so tantalisingly close and yet just out of reach.
He caught it on the third swing, and hung there, suspended over the chasm by hand and foot.
Cutter’s movement had forced Nando to stop again, but now he slipped forward and reached him, leaning down to take his hand.
“Come on Professor,” he said between gritted teeth.
There was no way he could clamber back onto the precarious rope. It was all he could do to clasp it with both hands and hook his other foot around it. That would do, though. He could traverse it hand over fist, Nando one step behind him every inch of the way.
He reached the other side, crawling off the bridge and flopping over onto his back. The impact with the hard-packed dirt sent a surge of nausea tearing through him. Cutter rolled over onto his stomach and retched into the long grass, wiping it away with the back of his hand.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The temple of Supay lay in ruins.
The damage had been done long before the Bairstow brothers or any other Westerner had laid eyes on it, dating all the way back to the savagery of the Conquistadors.
“This place is known to my people as the door to Uca Pacha,” Nando said, as they approached the weather-beaten arch.
“Why do I get the feeling that doesn’t mean ‘the door to Paradise’,” Cutter said, nursing
his injured shoulder.
“It is the door to the Inca Underworld, my friend,” Nando told him. It seemed as if their shared peril had begun to heal the sense of betrayal.
“It always is,” Cutter responded wryly.
The temple was built on five levels, though the stones at the summit had long since crumbled away to little more than rubble. Above the keystone of the archway, there was a hole set in the stone that was the size of his fist. Nando explained.
“At midday on the solstice the sun will shine directly into the temple through the Eye of the Underworld and open the way to Uca Pacha for the fearless traveller.”
“What day is it?” Connor asked.
“Not the solstice,” Stephen assured him.
An element of normality had settled down over them after Cutter’s near-plunge. The banter felt a little exaggerated, as though they were trying to make up for the scare he’d given them by pretending everything in the Garden of Evil was rosy. He loved them for it.
“Well, there’s no point waiting to be invited in,” Cutter said. “Coming?”
“Right behind you, Professor,” Lucas said.
“Not too close, in case he falls down a hole or something,” Connor joked. “You don’t want him dragging you down with him.”
“Connor, shut up,” Cutter said, shaking his head.
“Shutting up now.”
Cutter walked under the arch, and into the frigid chill of the temple.
The first thing that hit him was the smell; the bittersweet kiss of spices on the back of his throat; thyme, rosemary, strong herbs that had no place in the dank chill beneath the stone.
“It’s here,” he said. “Connor, do the honours.”
“Will do.” Connor took the handheld anomaly detector out of his pocket and turned it on. It immediately responded with a high-pitched ululating static hiss. “We’re right on top of it.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Cutter said, peering into the darkness. Without his thermal-imaging goggles he was as good as blind. He couldn’t very well commandeer one of the other pairs though. Instead, he reached into his pockets for the strip of tyre he’d cut away and spat a curse as he came up empty handed. That, too, was lying at the bottom of the chasm.
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