Well, we’d bumped into them again. They were fifteen yards in front of us and they weren’t alone. They were standing with a pack of young warriors, all of them decked out in what looked like the kind of clothes ancient Incan warriors would’ve worn when they battled the Spanish conquistadors way back in the 1500s.
Several of the young guys were holding long blowguns. I had to figure they were the ones who’d nailed us with their tranquilizer darts the night before.
One of the older guys was wearing the high priest’s headdress Merck had stolen from us on Cocos Island. He was also holding the golden staff (which Merck had also stolen) with the yellow sapphire (which Merck had stolen most recently) mounted on top in the corncob.
Now it seemed that these angry guys had stolen it all from Merck! Because they had him and his three French henchmen trapped and suspended in a hunting net.
“Mr. Collier tells us he no longer needs you, Guy Dubonnet Merck!” decreed the elderly man wearing the high priest’s headdress and holding the golden staff with the sparkling jewel in its tip. “He says you have found everything we shall require to perform the sacred ritual.”
“Everything, that is, except for that which is most important,” added the spookiest-looking old man in the group. “A human heart to offer to Inti, the god of the sun!”
“Sacré bleu!” shouted Merck, trapped in the net. “Nathan Collier and I had a deal.”
“This is a very high honor, Mr. Merck,” said another one of the elders. “Those of us in this cult seek to revive the ancient powers of the Incas. To fulfill our destiny, we must offer a human sacrifice. You will be our messenger to the supreme sun god!”
“Can’t you just send him a text?” squealed Merck. “Maybe an e-mail?”
“Do not mock the all-powerful, almighty, and most benevolent Inti!” cried the priest. “Prepare your soul for its journey to the sun!”
Wow. They were really going to do this. The crazy cult dudes were going to slay Guy Dubonnet Merck.
CHAPTER 54
“Finally,” said the cult member dressed in the priest costume, “thanks to our rich and powerful new friend, we have everything we need to find Inkarri’s Lost City of Gold.”
His warriors rattled their blowguns.
The fanatical leader raised his arms toward the sky. “We have the ancient staff and ceremonial headpiece of the Willaq Umu, the high priest of the sun. We have the girl with the hidden map written inside her memory.”
“Really?” said Merck. “I don’t see her. Maybe you should cut me down so I can help you recapture her.”
“She is with the Colliers,” said the cult guy in a wool hat. “At the temple.”
“There they will learn what I must say to raise Paititi!” said the cult’s priest. “What words I, the high priest of the sun, must say when we offer Inti the ancient sacrifice that he demands—your still-beating heart. Prepare to die!”
“All of us?” cried one of Merck’s goons.
“No,” said the priest. “Just your chief. He who hides one eye.”
“Silence!” the cult leader shouted at Merck’s cronies, who were celebrating the fact that they wouldn’t have their hearts removed. “Supay?”
One of the big guys toting a blowgun fell to his knees. “Yes, Your High Holiness?”
“Prepare the sacrificial tumi. Make certain its blade is sharp so it might cut clean!”
“Yes, Your High Holiness!” Supay ran off.
I wiped some sweat out of my eyes and wondered, What will these guys do to Storm after she takes them where they want to go?
“We’re in luck,” I heard Dad whisper to Tommy.
“Um, how’s that?” Tommy whispered back.
Dad wiggled his satellite phone. “I did some quick research online. Today is definitely our lucky day! We just have to wait a few more minutes.”
“They’re going to kill Merck,” I said.
“No. We are going to stop them.” Dad checked his dive watch. “We just have to wait fourteen minutes and thirty-two seconds.”
So that’s what we did.
We kept still.
We remained quiet.
We waited fourteen minutes and thirty-two seconds.
CHAPTER 55
Time seemed to slow down.
The only sounds in that clearing were Merck whimpering, the buzzing of bugs, some birds cawing, and the distant scrape of stone against steel as the warrior Supay sharpened the edge of his deadly blade.
“Stay put,” said Dad when fourteen minutes and thirty-two seconds were finally up. He handed his tracker device and satellite phone to Tommy. “I’m going to borrow a page from Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.”
“Huh?” I said.
“Remind me to ask your mother to add that classic to your American literature reading list ASAP. Now then, Thomas, if this doesn’t go the way I’m hoping it will, you’re in charge. Go rescue your sister.”
“B-b-but—” stammered Tommy.
“That’s an order.”
Tommy nodded. “Okay. But be careful out there.”
Dad gave us all a smile and a wink. “Don’t worry. I have science and, of course, the moon on my side.”
None of us had any idea what the heck he was talking about.
Dad stood up and spread open the wall of ferns he’d been hiding behind. He boldly stepped into the jungle clearing.
“Begone from this place!” he bellowed.
The priest and his army spun around to see who would dare interrupt their sacred ritual.
“Infidel!” shouted the guy in the priest costume. “Intruder!”
His young warriors raised their primitive weapons and aimed them at Dad.
“You dare to raise your weapons at me?” Dad growled. He sounded like the mighty Mufasa from that movie The Lion King. Yes, I have a personal DVD player on board the Lost and I’m not afraid to use it. “Very well! Because you dare to threaten me, you leave me no choice. I must take the sun from the sky!”
He raised his arms.
“Begone, sun! May the moon smother you whole!”
The puzzled priest looked up to the sky and gasped.
The sun was starting to disappear behind a round shadow. It was going dark, blocked out by the moon.
“No!” cried the priest. “You cannot do this thing!”
Dad laughed his best diabolical-supervillain laugh. “I’m doing it, aren’t I?”
I grabbed the satellite phone from Tommy to do a quick search. I tapped in the words solar and eclipse.
Yep. Just as I suspected.
That was the science Dad had known was on our side. This was definitely our lucky day because it was the first total solar eclipse in this part of Peru in fourteen years, and it happened exactly when we needed it to. Well, we had to wait those fourteen minutes and thirty-two seconds, but, come on, that’s still pretty lucky.
“Give us back the sun!” shouted the priest. “Restore Inti!”
“Only if you release your captives and leave this place! Now!”
I was kind of hoping Dad would also ask the high priest to give back his rod, the Sacred Stone, and his headgear, but I could tell Dad didn’t want to press his luck, even though this was our super-lucky day.
The priest hesitated. He looked at the net with his squirming prisoners. He looked to the sky. The sun was slowly disappearing behind a shadow.
“Cut them down!” he ordered.
One of the young warriors sliced a rope with his knife. Merck and his trapped buddies tumbled to the ground in a jumbled ball.
“Flee!” Dad shouted to the Incan wannabes. Overhead, the sun grew even darker.
“You have not freed the sun!” shouted the withered old guy in the hat.
“And I will not until I know that you and your men are long gone from this place!”
Dad knew a total solar eclipse would last about two hours. Even he couldn’t rush it.
“Flee now, or I swear by Viracocha, I w
ill extinguish the sun forever!”
Finally, they all fled. Fast!
When he was absolutely certain they were gone, Dad signaled for us to come out from our hiding places. The four of us marched over to where Merck and his thugs lay in a heap on the ground, still tangled up in that hunting net.
“Merci beaucoup, Dr. Kidd,” said Merck, grinning up at us even though his face was mushed in a mesh of rope. “We are most grateful that you rescued us. Now, if you will kindly cut us out of this netting.”
Dad shook his head.
“Not until you answer a few questions.”
“Very well. We are, as you say, in your debt.”
“Did Nathan Collier hire you to steal the Incan headpiece and rod from us on Cocos?”
“Oui,” said Merck.
“And the Sacred Stone?”
“Oui. This was also Monsieur Collier, aided, of course, by his scoundrel of a son Chet, who has a, how you say, satellite phone. He also suggested to his father that he should have these crazed cultists kidnap your daughter and bring her to him. Apparently the one you call Storm is the only one who knows precisely where to find the Lost City of Paititi, non?”
Dad didn’t answer. Instead, he asked a question of his own.
“An undertaking of this magnitude would prove quite expensive. Tell me: Who’s funding Nathan Collier?”
“Easy,” said Merck. “Juan Carlos Rojas!”
CHAPTER 56
Dad sliced through the net with his enormous knife.
Seriously. The thing is the size of Pinocchio’s nose when he’s been fibbing.
Guy Dubonnet Merck and his men spilled out of their tangled trap like limes out of a bag with a hole in the bottom.
“Merci, Dr. Kidd. Merci,” said Merck as he creaked up from the ground on wobbly legs and dusted off his khaki riding pants. “Has anyone seen my hat?”
One of his henchmen handed Merck his French Foreign Legion cap.
“Somehow, it ended up in my shoe, mon ami,” the guy said. “Je suis désolé.”
“You should be sorry!” said Merck, slapping the flapped hat against his arm to air it out. “Now it smells like fromage!”
That’s when I really missed Storm. She would’ve told me fromage meant “cheese.”
Beck and I had already done a quick survey of the scene. When the high priest and his cult buddies took off, they’d grabbed all of Merck’s crew’s weapons. Of course, all we had was Dad’s hunting knife.
Did I mention the thing is ginormous?
Advantage Kidd Family.
“Before we let you and your assorted thugs leave this rain forest—forever,” said Dad, seething with rage, “we need to know everything you know.”
“Why?” asked Merck. “I was a very bad student in school. I almost flunked French, and I am, how you say, French.”
“The only information I require from you, Monsieur Merck, has to do with my daughter Storm.” Dad’s temper was flaring hotter than a meteor that had just hit Earth’s atmosphere.
(I wonder if Beck and I got our amazing Twin Tirade talents from Dad.)
“Where did they take her?” Dad demanded.
“To the temple that she saw on the secret map,” said Merck quickly.
Dad’s face was maybe an inch from Merck’s. The knife? It was pretty close to the skeevy guy’s scrawny neck.
Merck spilled everything he knew as fast as he could. “The man in the headdress, the nasty gentleman who was going to cut out my heart and offer it to the sun god first thing tomorrow morning, he knows your daughter can take him and his followers the ‘final distance’ to the Lost City of Gold. Juan Carlos Rojas has given these cuckoo birds who call themselves the New Incas everything they need to reclaim the treasure and glory of their vanquished ancestors—your daughter with the map in her head, the jeweled staff, the sacred headpiece, and, of course, the brilliant archaeologist Nathan Collier!”
“Excuse me?” said Tommy, chuffing a laugh. “Who told them that Collier was brilliant?”
“The guy’s totally lame,” said Beck.
“He couldn’t find a watermelon in a washtub,” I said. “Once, Nathan Collier saw a sign that said ‘Disneyland, Left,’ so he turned around and went home.”
I could’ve gone on snapping Collier all day.
But Dad was glaring at me.
CHAPTER 57
“Bick?” said Dad, shaking his head.
“Too much?”
“Little bit,” said Tommy.
“We’re kind of in a hurry to rescue Storm,” added Beck.
“Right. Gotcha. My bad,” I said sheepishly. Collier is just such an easy target!
“Monsieur Merck?” Dad said, lowering his knife, because the guy was cooperating. Merck was also shaking like a shirt hanging on a clothesline in a hurricane. “Please go on. Tell us everything you know. Don’t leave anything out.”
“Very well. Nathan Collier and his men have been trailing you on motocyclettes, what you call ATVs—all-terrain vehicles.”
Beck and I nodded. “We’re familiar with ATVs.”
“Très bon,” said Merck. “His son, the greasy one they call Chet, was wearing a GPS tracking device the whole time that he was traveling with you.”
“Was the GPS tracker in a pair of earrings?” asked Tommy.
“No,” said Merck. “I believe the transmitter is hidden in what they call a high-school class ring?”
The one that Chet was always twisting and nervously fiddling with!
“Go on,” said Dad.
“Nathan Collier and now his son have solemnly sworn to the Incan cult’s priest that they alone know all the magic words that must be recited for the city of Paititi to rise up from its hiding place.”
“Whoa,” said Tommy. “The Lost City of Gold is underground?”
“Oui. This is what Nathan Collier has told the members of this strange and mystical sect. And only he knows the sacred ritual to make it reappear. And when it does, when Collier—who, as you may recall from my earlier confession, is being paid by Juan Carlos Rojas—gives these New Incas the gold that their ancestors hid from the conquistadors five centuries ago, they will give the rain forest to Rojas!”
Dad still had an extremely stern look on his face.
“This sacred ritual,” he said, “it involves a human sacrifice?”
“Oui. Many ancient Incan rites did. So the new high priest needs to do it, too. That was why they were going to slice me open and remove my still-beating heart from my rib cage and why I am so grateful to you, Professor Thomas Kidd, for rescuing me. Mwah! Mwah! I kiss you tenderly upon both of your cheeks. Mwah! Mwah! I do it again.”
Dad just stood there and took the kisses. From the look in his eyes, his mind was a million miles away in a place that wasn’t very cheerful.
“So,” said Tommy, “if they don’t have your human heart, game over. No golden city rising up from the jungle floor.”
“Unless,” said Dad grimly, his mind snapping back from whatever dark world it had just visited, “they’ve already found a replacement.”
“Oui,” said Merck. “And these strange New Incas, they love child sacrifices.”
The answer hit us.
“Storm!”
CHAPTER 58
Dad sent Merck packing.
He was extremely eager to go.
“By this time tomorrow, I will be in Marseilles, nibbling on chocolate croissants and drinking bouillabaisse through a straw!”
Beck urped. “Isn’t bouillabaisse a fish stew?”
“Oui.”
Beck urped again. Me, too. How do you suck floating fish chunks through a straw?
“Au revoir, Kidd Family Treasure Hunters.” Merck saluted us. “Merci beaucoup, once again, for saving my life. I hope you are able to also save the life of the one you call Storm.”
Merck and his men hurried to a pile of lush green vines that was actually a camouflage canopy hiding a helicopter. They got in and took off.
“Th
ere are ATV tread marks over in the muddy banks of that river,” said Dad, pointing east. He checked his GPS tracker. “We may not have Storm and her memorized treasure map but we have her coordinates. We also have a very easy trail to follow because Nathan Collier always prefers to ride instead of hike.”
“Too true,” said Tommy. “If he hiked, he might sweat.”
“And,” I said, “if he sweats, his forehead hair curl might come unglued.”
Collier, who was about as short as me (he always made sure he was photographed standing on a box) was famous on cable TV for his dashing “Look at Me, I’m an Explorer” costume: dusty boots (even if he was nowhere near a desert), khaki pants, khaki shirt, faded leather bomber jacket, and a jaunty captain’s hat. His hair was always perfectly coiffed, with one curl dangling just above his left eyebrow. I think he used Elmer’s Glue for hair gel.
We had followed the banks of the swollen river for maybe half a mile when, all of a sudden, we heard a scream.
“Help us!” cried a woman. “The snake! It wants my baby!”
Dad and Tommy took off running.
Beck and I were right behind them.
We rounded a bend in the river.
I couldn’t believe what I saw: A giant anaconda! A monster snake, seventeen feet long!
It was slithering toward a woman shielding a little girl, probably her daughter, on the riverbank.
Just in case you don’t read as many cheesy books or watch as many “Eaten Alive!” clips on YouTube as I sometimes do when we’re on board the Lost and I’ve finished all my homework, let me fill you in on a few anaconda details.
One: They’re huge. Officially, the anaconda is the largest snake in the whole world.
Two: They’re basically at the top of the food chain in the Amazon.
Three: They’re not poisonous. They don’t have to be! An anaconda waits for its prey to come down to the water’s edge, strikes fast, coils its body around its victim, and squeezes until it crushes the life out of its target. Also, an anaconda can unhinge its jaw to swallow large prey whole.
Treasure Hunters--Quest for the City of Gold Page 10
