It was the first sign they’d deviated from the route they’d taken on the way in, and Sam instantly knew there was something wrong. Behind him, the sound of the pursuing Pirahã tribe was getting louder. They no longer whistled in a soft, melodic way. Instead they were chanting something. The words were incomprehensible, but there was no doubt about their purpose – this was a war cry.
Sam said, “Not to rush you or anything, but our company’s nearly here.”
“Just a minute,” Tom replied. “I think I can see an opening up ahead.”
Sam rounded the next corner and the shallow tunnel opened into a sizeable oval shaped room. It was approximately thirty feet long by twenty wide. He was able to stand up. The entire room – and he thought room not cavern – had been excavated using hand-tools. Rough grooves and indents covered the walls and floors, where rocks and simple tools had been used to hollow out the area. The ubiquitous crystals that had made up most of the rest of the caverns beneath the Tepui Mountains had been removed, and only one single stalagmite remained in the center of the room, as though it had been required to support the ceiling nearly fifteen feet above.
On this giant stalagmite, a man had been bound by his wrist and ankles. The skin over his wrists had been worn off, as though he’d fought to free himself in vain, by pulling his hands through the electrical cable ties. Unable to free himself, the wretched man had spent his last efforts alive staring at something on the wall directly opposite him.
Sam’s eyes darted to the wall. There was a large TV monitor. Ninety inches at least. A complete anachronism in an underground temple built entirely by hand using rudimentary tools. The monitor displayed multiple images from secret digital cameras recording video throughout the temple and its maze of stalagmites, stalactites, and giant quartz crystals.
His eyes returned to the remains of the bound wretch. Two bullet holes wept blood from the man’s chest. It meant that whoever killed him did so only minutes earlier.
His dead eyes were fixed in a state of abject horror.
Sam felt his stomach churn with fear and a sinister and pervasive sense of impending disaster, as he spotted that the man’s eyes were a deep violet color.
There was only one other person he’d ever met who had eyes like that. Her name was Elise, and as far as he knew, she descended directly from the ancient race of Master Builders.
Tom said, “What do you think?”
Sam swallowed. “I don’t know, but it raises the question – has there been a quarrel among the remaining descendants of the Master Builders?”
He swept the entire room with his flashlight. There were no tunnels leading out of it. One way in and one way out. And an army of brutal warriors approaching.
“What do you think?” Sam asked.
Tom leveled his Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine gun at the entrance. “I think we’re trapped.”
Chapter Seven
Sam’s focus shifted back to the huge display monitor.
It showed hundreds of Pirahã guards mobilizing quickly through the crystal maze. The giant pieces of quartz were vibrating in a strange harmony with their deep war cry. He stepped closer, and realized his pursuers were now coming through the section where they’d first discovered the raked sand. He put his hand on the screen. The image size changed. It was a touch-screen. He used his thumb and two fingers to expand the image.
He could now see their faces clearly. Their lips were entirely still, but a strange sound resonated out of their open mouths. The tune was completely unrecognizable, but mesmerizing. It gave Sam a momentary pause.
He smiled, mystified. “Truly fascinating, isn’t it?”
Tom ignored the comment. “We’ve got to go, Sam. I thought you were supposed to be finding a way out of here?”
Sam grinned. “So I was.”
He opened his hand and then ran each of his fingers together until it minimized the screen into a series of smaller mapped documents. It revealed a dozen separate video images. He glanced over them. To the left corner, an image showed Billie approaching the end of the crystal cavern, where the ropes were still hanging at the entrance. Just past that image, was an external video depicting the sandstone face of the cliff. In the middle of the image, he could just make out the two figures of Elise and Genevieve prusiking up the rope.
His gaze swept downward, where he spotted an image of Tom and himself staring at the computer monitor. Two screens to the right displayed the narrow, empty tunnel, through which they had recently crawled to reach the room they were now in. A second or two later, the first of their pursuers entered the tunnel.
Tom said, “They’ll be inside any minute now…”
Sam made a big show of sighing. “Yes… and we’ll be gone.”
He clicked on the video feed directly above their room and expanded the image by opening his fingers across the screen. The room was a hollowed tunnel, carved using rudimentary tools to chisel away at the soft sandstone.
“Would you look at that?” Sam said. “An escape tunnel!”
He swiped the screen to the left, moving to the next screen, followed by another. On the fourth screen, he spotted the back of a man, climbing onto a rope hanging over the sandstone cliff of the Tepui Mountains. Sam couldn’t see his face, but the man had thick black hair with minor graying to the side.
“That’s our man!” Sam said.
Tom grabbed him by the shoulder. “That’s great, but how do we get there?”
Sam smiled. “I thought you already knew?”
“No.”
“Follow me.”
Sam walked behind to the back of the giant stalagmite in the middle of the room. He shined his flashlight across the back of the pillar. Small, dark indents had been carved into the back of its limestone structure.
He locked the safety on his Heckler and Koch MP5 and swung its strap over his shoulder. Climbing hand over hand, he scurried up the limestone ladder. At the very top of the stalagmite, three pillars of quartz crystal met together like a giant prism. From the base of the pillar, it was impossible to see that the ceiling went anywhere, but upon reaching it, Sam spotted a secret entrance had been carved out of the sandstone that formed behind them.
Sam slipped through and climbed into the new tunnel. Unlike the rest of the tunnels they’d found beneath the Tepui Mountains, this one went in a perfectly straight line.
Tom squeezed his broad shoulders through the opening. “They’re flooding into the room now. It won’t take them long to discover the hidden ladder, if they don’t know about it already.”
Sam switched his MP5 submachine gun to F for fully automatic and turned to face the opening.
Tom met his gaze. “You don’t really think we’ve got enough ammo to stop all of them, do you?”
“Not for a second. Even if we had enough rounds and the time to reload, I wouldn’t want to be responsible for the extinction of an entire tribe. I’ve got a better idea though.”
The sound of Pirahã filling into the room below echoed through the secret passage. As expected, their numbers soared. It would be impossible to hope that they simply wouldn’t spot the hidden ladder, or that they could be fought off once they climbed up it.
A large fragment of quartz protruded out of the sandstone wall next to the opening to the secret room below. It was roughly one foot wide by six long. If it could be convinced to break free of the wall, the stone would fall into the opening, blocking anyone’s progress through it.
Sam removed his backpack and withdrew a single, copper-lined linear-cutting charge of C4. It was used by American Special Forces for cutting through thick sheet steel and solid doors during explosive breaches. He wrapped it around the base of the hanging crystal and attached a twenty-foot line of detcord.
Tom stepped back and nodded. “Clear.”
Sam flicked the switch, and the C4 exploded.
Chapter Eight
The small blast exploded in a flash, sending a torrent of rubble and air down the confined space of the tunnel.
The blast-wave ripped into Sam, taking his breath away in an instant. Beneath closed eyelids, he watched as the blast lit up the tunnel, and his ears rang with the continuous echo of the explosion.
In an instant it was over.
Smoke wafted out of the rubble, where fractured shards of crystal littered the secret opening. Sam turned his gaze toward Tom to see if he was okay. Confirming Tom was uninjured, he focused his attention on the pile of rubble. His flashlight shined through the fine dust of the tunnel in ghostly silence.
His eyes fixed on the rubble. The top of the pile shuddered. Nothing more than a fine tremor. It could have been the remains of the debris settling into the small opening. Or it could be something much more significant.
Sam held his breath. The movement stopped. Maybe he’d imagined it? It felt like an abominably long time. He breathed out. The plan had worked and the small cave in served its purpose to block any progress from their pursuers.
Then, two hands broke through the rubble.
A moment later, the bloodied hands pulled at the shards of fractured quartz. Bit by bit the impossible became a certainty. They were going to dig their way out through the pile of rubble.
Sam swore.
Tom said, “Go!”
Sam started running down the escape tunnel. It was tall enough that he could move without fear of hitting his head on the roof, while so narrow his wide shoulders nearly scraped the walls. The tunnel continued for approximately a thousand feet, in a slight upward direction.
The strange humming sound coming from their pursuers gradually increased, until he no longer needed to glance over his shoulder to know they were catching up very quickly.
Sam reached the end, where a giant sandstone boulder rested perpendicular to the tunnel, blocking their exit. It was approximately eighty feet high and thirty or more wide. Between the stone and the escape passageway a narrow crevasse ran in both directions. Sunlight filtered in from both sides. It was a tight fit, but it looked like they could squeeze through it.
The sound of a hundred or more Pirahã guards making their strange and identical war cry was enough to remove any doubt in his mind.
“Which way?” Sam asked.
Tom glanced left and right. “Has to be left.”
“Why?”
Tom shined his flashlight to the right. “The sandstone tapers inward here. I’d never fit through.”
Sam nodded. “Okay, left it is.”
Tom threw his last remaining smoke grenade down the passage behind them. “You go first. You’re smaller, and should be faster. I’m right behind you!”
Sam didn’t argue.
He slipped into the lateral crevasse. It was an awkward climb. Although he could see the light of the exit about thirty feet away, the entire gap dipped fifty or more feet below. The result was that he needed to climb and slide his way through it – with the constant risk of falling deep into the narrower section where he might never climb out.
Shifting his weight from his back to his hands, and from his hands to his feet, Sam used opposing pressures – the way rock-climbers do to ascend the rock formations known as chimneys – to shuffle his way across the crevasse. About ten feet from the opening the opposing sandstone walls tapered, and he found the first section where he struggled to squeeze through. He adjusted his position and tried again. Same problem. He turned his head and tried exhaling to reduce the width of his chest. This time he got farther, but was still unable to completely get past the same spot.
He exhaled the last of the air in his lungs, and gravity returned him to where he’d started. Sam shined his flashlight across the opposing walls, searching for any shadows that might indicate a slightly wider section.
Behind him, gunshots fired.
“We’ve got company, Sam!” Tom shouted. “Forget caution, just get through there!”
Sam said, “I’m on it!”
His glance stopped nearly eight feet above where he was trying to cross the crevasse. There, a small piece of black hair and not yet dried blood marked the way out. Sam shimmied upward and across.
The area was still narrow, but definitely wider than down below.
He glanced at Tom below. “Are you following?”
Tom placed his MP5 strap over his shoulder and started to climb. “Keep going, I can see the route.”
Squished between the two immovable rock walls, with his hands out above his head and his feet pressed against opposite ends, Sam felt his world close in on him. Here, panic could kill as quickly as a bullet. Every part of him wanted to breathe deeply and escape. Instead, salvation only came from exhaling deeply.
He’d gotten past the section where he’d become stuck previously. With his head turned to the left, he could no longer see Tom behind him, but could hear Tom’s exerted breathing. In front of him, he could see the light of the opening. He was close. He just needed to get another couple of feet across and then descend until he could reach the opening.
But instead he was stuck.
Fear and claustrophobia, which had haunted him as a child, now reared its ugly head. He concentrated on small movements with his hands and feet to shift his weight, trying not to let the terror override his decisions.
Even so, his fine movements were no longer getting him any closer to the edge of the crevasse. Claustrophobia, it turns out, was only irrational when you could breathe. In this case, so much pressure was being exerted on his chest wall, that inhaling was impossible.
He tried to breathe out further, but there was no more air left in his lungs to exhale.
Beyond the panic, he heard Tom’s voice.
“Let go.”
Let go of what? I’m stuck!
Tom continued. “Just relax your entire body... and let gravity do its job.”
Sam untensed his arms and legs.
Nothing happened.
Then he shifted slightly downward. A moment later, he slipped down into the large area. Several feet down, the narrow section suddenly appeared as wide as a house. He took a deep breath, and reveled in the open expanse.
His gaze shifted upward toward Tom, who was already quickly working his way to the same spot in which he’d become stuck. Sam had learned long ago that caving was as much about technique as it was about size. In this case, despite Tom being physically larger, he was considerably more capable and adept at spelunking – the process of navigating through the narrow sections of a cave system.
Sam focused his flashlight across the crevasse. A beam of light stopped at the entrance to the escape tunnel, through which they’d come. The first of their Pirahã guards came into sight. The man carried a blade of obsidian, slicing at the sandstone wall as though he could enlarge it.
“You’ve got a very angry looking man with a very big sword on your tail, Tom.”
“I see him!”
Sam shifted backward, toward the exit of the crevasse. He braced himself against the two walls with his back and feet in opposing directions. Then, he removed his MP5 and removed the safety.
He aimed the submachine gun at the guard. “Don’t come any farther!”
It was a waste of his breath. The man couldn’t understand English, and if he had, Sam doubted very much that it would have made any difference. His attacker was following divine orders from a Master Builder, who had no intention of letting them escape.
The guard hadn’t spotted Tom above yet. Instead he tried to come straight across the crevasse to attack him. Sam watched in horror as the Pirahã guard moved quickly, with such ease through the narrow section, that he thought the man might just squeeze through and reach him.
He shuffled backward another foot.
His attacker squeezed into the narrowest section of the crevasse directly opposite him, and became stuck. Every muscle in the man’s wiry body tensed and struggled to free himself, and when it became abundantly clear that his desire was impossible to achieve, the Pirahã warrior extended his arm and tried to strike with his obsidian sword.
The attack was so sw
ift and unexpected that Sam didn’t have time to react to it. The obsidian blade sliced downward, narrowly slipping past his face, so that Sam could feel the rush of wind as it scraped past his eyes.
Sam snapped his head backward.
The sword swung downward without connecting to anything. The momentum pulled the Pirahã forward, and he fell downward. He slid twenty or more feet until his chest became wedged in the vice-like section below.
Sam watched in horror as the man tried to fight his entrapment. He scrambled with his arms and legs like an insect in a spider’s web. With each movement, he slid farther downward, until his chest became lodged tight between the two walls of stone. Aghast, Sam noticed the poor wretch was now incapable of moving and unable to breathe. He flailed his arms and legs, moving them faster and faster, until fatigue and hypoxia thankfully took over and suddenly everything went limp.
Sam moved the beam of his flashlight upward, where more Pirahã were now racing toward him. One of them threw a spear. It ricocheted across the sandstone, missing him by a couple of feet, before falling to the ground eighty or more feet below.
Tom slipped down next to him. “What are you waiting for? Let’s go!”
“You…” Sam said, exhaling a sigh of relief.
He quickly shuffled to the end of the crevasse and out into the open – onto a half-a-foot wide precipice. His eyes swept his new environment. The ledge was a little over ten feet in length, and positioned approximately halfway up a fourteen-hundred-foot vertical wall of sandstone. The golden wall appeared to be floating in a sea of early morning mist. To the right, where the sun had penetrated the ancient valley earlier, there were speckled views of the jungle. Its dark green canopy appeared like little more than dark green grass. They were on the vertigo-inducing face of the Tepui Mountains.
Sam turned to Tom. “Now where the hell do you suppose we go?”
Code to Extinction Page 6
