“Jump!” he yelled. “I’ll see you down below.” Cloutard took a big step forward and dropped into empty space. Hellen’s scream resounded for a brief moment as they disappeared into the clouds.
Tom banked the plane left, hoping to bring it down somewhere close to his friends. The starboard engine began to stutter and smoke, then the propeller stopped turning, and the machine instantly began to drop.
Once he was through the clouds, he saw the open parachute and sighed with relief. When they had jumped, his heart had skipped a beat and he’d wondered if he would ever see Hellen and François again. But right now, he had to focus on somehow getting the DC3 back on the ground, or his worst fears would be realized.
60
In the jungles of Belize
“Merde.”
“Is that all you have to say?” Hellen grumbled, squirming, still attached to Cloutard’s chest. The parachute had caught in the dense canopy of the trees and they were stuck. Which, on the other hand, was not entirely a disadvantage: “We’re lucky the trees broke our fall, or we’d be pulp right now, jumping together like that,” said Hellen. She’d heard all of Tom’s stories. When they had still been together, he’d talked her ears off about base jumping and had tried many times to persuade her to go skydiving with him. It seemed he’d finally gotten her to jump out of a plane.
It struck her like an electric shock: she’d been so focused on her own survival that she’d almost forgotten about Tom. Cloutard seemed to read her thoughts and tried to put her mind at ease.
“Tom has more lives than an army of cats. I am sure he managed to land that old bucket and get out in one piece.”
Hellen nodded and fought desperately against a rush of tears. She wanted to believe Cloutard, but Tom’s situation seemed truly hopeless. She gulped down her fears. Either way, there was nothing she could do for him now.
She managed to open her harness and pull herself up on Cloutard until she could get a foot on his shoulder and reach a branch. She grabbed hold of it in the nick of time, as one of the branches that the chute had caught on gave way and Cloutard dropped several feet lower. Hellen was left dangling in space but she quickly found a foothold on a lower branch.
Cloutard let out a cry when he fell, and another when his fall stopped abruptly when the parachute tangled again. He was hanging quite close to some stronger branches, and he began to swing the parachute to get closer to them.
“François, watch out!” Hellen called as she made her way carefully down the tree.
“I know, I know, or I’ll fall on my face,” the Frenchman muttered sullenly.
“That wouldn’t be the only problem,” Hellen said, and she pointed to the jungle floor. A jaguar, a common predator in the rainforests of Belize, had appeared directly beneath Cloutard. He was still dangling a good ten feet over its head, but it was looking up at him with interest, as if it wasn’t sure whether this strange creature might be something it could eat.
“Next time, can we stick to breaking into museums? We could steal the Mona Lisa or find the damned Amber Room. Wild horses could not drag me back to the jungle,” he grumbled.
Hellen took the flare gun out of her backpack, aimed at the jaguar and pulled the trigger. She missed, but at least she succeeded in scaring it away. And not a second too soon: moments later, Cloutard fell screaming to the ground.
“Thank you,” he said, rubbing his tailbone.
“I can’t hear the plane anymore,” Hellen said with concern.
“Then let us go and look for Tom,” said Cloutard, pointing and tramping off in what he thought might be the right direction.
After half an hour, they had not gotten very far at all. The undergrowth was dense and made progress difficult—the machete helped, but not much. Fortunately, no other jungle dwellers had crossed their path, but there was also no sign of Tom. Their spirits were rapidly flagging.
“I feel like we’re going in a circle,” Hellen said.
“Do you have any idea which way it is to the pyramid? That would be our best chance of finding Tom,” said Cloutard.
“Frankly . . . no,” Hellen admitted. She looked around and noticed something off to their right. “It looks brighter over that way. Maybe the fire burned a clearing over there? We would at least be able to get our bearings better.”
“You are right,” Cloutard said, and he scratched his head. “Strange. It looks as if something is shining, like a reflection of the sun. The light seems to be coming not only from above but as if it is being reflected by something on the ground.”
Hellen began walking faster and faster toward the source of light. The trees grew thinner, and she began to run. Moments later, Cloutard heard her cry out excitedly. He followed as quickly as he could, and finally found her kneeling on the ground, pushing aside branches, lianas and stones. His eyes widened when he saw the sun reflecting more and more from the ground underfoot.
“Monsieur Cloutard,” Hellen said proudly, “may I present to you the Golden Path.”
“Well,” said Cloutard. “We are certainly better at this than the Spanish were.”
“Now all we have to do is follow it. It should lead us directly to El Dorado,” Hellen said, her voice trembling.
Cloutard pushed aside his misgivings about all the murderous creatures prowling through the jungle and followed Hellen.
“I hope Tom finds us soon,” she whispered as they went.
They soon discovered that they were, in fact, moving toward the burned clearing. Soon, the top of the pyramid appeared ahead. “That’s strange,” Hellen said, pointing to it. “The pyramid is that way, but the Golden Path turns off to the right here.”
“Maybe it’s a secret entrance, like the one we found in Ethiopia. There were several ways into the chambers there.”
Hellen nodded. “Let’s stay on the path,” she said.
Minutes later, their suspicion was proven correct. Through the undergrowth, Hellen saw the remains of a wall, and with her machete she cleared away the vines and bushes. The Golden Path continued down a stairway that led into a subterranean vault.
“The passage leads toward the pyramid,” said Hellen. “It looks like you were right, François. We’re on the path to El Dorado.”
“The pyramid seems to be mostly underground,” Cloutard noted. “It has been overgrown and buried for centuries.”
They descended the stairs and found torches in fixtures on the walls at the entrance to the tunnel, which was roughly eight feet square.
“You don’t happen to have any matches, do you?” Hellen asked, holding one of the torches toward Cloutard. To her surprise, he took a gold Dupont lighter from his trouser pocket and lit the torch. “But you don’t even smoke!” she said.
“Yes, but one never knows the ladies one will meet,” Cloutard replied, taking the torch from the opposite wall.
“You old Romeo.”
Cloutard grinned and took a swig from his hip flask. “Shall we?”
They disappeared into the tunnel and followed the Golden Path onward. Despite the anticipation of uncovering more of this archaeological sensation, Hellen felt a brief wave of sadness wash over her. The uncertainty about Tom’s fate was too much for her to bear.
61
Somewhere in the jungle west of Belize City, on the Guatemalan border
A walk in the park, Tom thought. If I can land a seaplane in the center of Barcelona, I can do this. The endless ocean of green beneath him looked soft and fuzzy from above, each massive tree merging seamlessly with the next, all the way to the horizon.
The small clearing that had been their original destination and on which their drunken pilot had assured them he could land was out of the question. It lay in a completely different direction, and the spontaneous course change had upset all their plans. Now the pilot was unconscious and Cloutard had jumped to safety with Hellen. Both engines had failed, one of them was actually in flames, and the plane was not designed to glide any distance, so now it was up to Tom to get the old a
luminum beast down safely. He would need a generous dose of luck to survive, but there were ways he could increase his chances.
First, he dumped the remaining fuel—with two dead engines, he wouldn’t need it, and at least the plane would not turn into a fireball around him during the rough landing ahead.
Second, he kept the landing gear retracted. He had to set the plane down as flat as possible on the treetops. A final attempt to wake the pilot failed. Tom locked the control column, then climbed out of the pilot’s seat and made his way into the back of the plane, where he felt he would be safer. When the DC3 finally hit the treetops—and particularly if it flipped over—the cockpit was the last place he wanted to be.
He buckled himself to the bench seat on one side and wove his fingers into the cargo net. He closed his eyes and sent a silent prayer heavenward when he heard the scraping and splintering of branches on the aircraft’s belly.
He wanted to see Hellen again. If he got out of this in one piece, he would have to tell her how he really felt about her, once and for all: that she was the woman for him.
And then it happened.
The nose tilted forward and down. There was a deafening roar. Despite the seat belt, Tom was thrown a short way into the air. Shards of glass and other debris flew through the plane. Branches ripped away the engines and the wings. The fuselage flew on through the dense canopy like a bullet, headed for the ground. Then, with a massive jolt, everything stopped moving. The body of the plane was stuck fast, almost vertically, in the fork of a giant tree.
Tom opened his eyes. Everything hurt. Flying glass had cut his face and hands. He was hanging sideways in his seat belt, still gripping the cargo net. All around, he heard the scratching of branches. The plane creaked and groaned unnervingly with every movement he made, and Tom knew only too well that a branch could break or the machine could tip and fall at any second. Slowly and with extreme caution, he wrapped a few loops of the net around his arm and unbuckled his seat belt with his free hand. He immediately slipped downward, but supported his weight on the net, using it as a kind of ladder to climb down toward the cockpit.
He braced his feet against the bulkhead behind the cockpit and looked out a window. It was a long way down; the plane hung more than thirty feet off the ground. Then he saw the small sports bag with the weapons. The force of the crash had sent it flying forward and it was hanging outside the cockpit, caught on the metal frame of the windshield.
I don’t believe it, Tom thought, as he climbed carefully down into the cockpit. The fuselage continued to make alarming noises. When he was already halfway into the cockpit, he looked up: the transport crates that had been tied down in the rear of the fuselage were hanging by a thread now. With Tom’s every move, they slipped a little further out of the net holding them back. He had no time to waste. A quick glance at the pilot and it was clear that nothing more could be done for him: a large branch had impaled him through the chest. He was dead, and probably hadn’t felt a thing.
Balancing like a gymnast, Tom managed to slip the toe of his right shoe through one of the handles of the sports bag and pull it up to him. The crates above him slipped and caught again, making him shudder. He pushed his arms through the handles of the bag, wearing it like a backpack as he climbed cautiously back out of the cockpit. Now he had to figure out how to get out of the plane.
He twisted the handle of the front hatch, just behind the cockpit. It was jammed. He tried again, harder. Nothing. The scraping and tearing sounds over his head were starting to really worry him. If the crates fell, it was all over. There was nowhere to dodge to. He threw himself at the hatch again. And again. And then it happened: with a loud snap the cargo net finally gave way and the crates plummeted through the plane. At the last possible second, the hatch swung wide and Tom leapt through. He held on tightly to the door handle and found himself dangling down the side of the fuselage as the crates exploded against the cockpit bulkhead. Splinters flew in all directions. Tom tried to brace his feet on a branch, but with his swinging and the impact of the crates, the plane finally dislodged. It slid sideways and plunged into the depths. The instant it fell, Tom let go of the door handle and fell with it.
He slammed chest-first into a branch ten feet further down, knocking the air out of his lungs, but he held onto it for dear life. Below him, the fuselage of the DC3 slammed into the jungle floor, a twisted wreck.
I never would have walked away from that, Tom thought. He climbed arduously down the tree, then set off in the direction where he’d last seen his friends’ parachute—and where he also suspected he would find the pyramid.
62
In the jungles of Belize
After following the tunnel for about fifty yards, the light reflecting from their torches began to grow brighter.
“Oh. My. God,” Hellen stammered.
Cloutard saw instantly what she meant. In front of them, the path changed. Not only was the path underfoot made of gold, but little by little, the ornamentation moved progressively up the sides of the tunnel. They passed typical Mayan reliefs, at first carved in stone, but then molded from pure gold. The gold seemed to be growing up the walls, like moss. The deeper they went into the tunnel, the higher it climbed, until eventually even the roof of the tunnel gleamed yellow. Gold as far as the eye could see, and the torchlight only magnified the effect. Cloutard turned in a circle, moving his torch from the base of the tunnel up the walls to the roof.
“This section alone must be worth millions,” he said.
Hellen nodded, just as much in awe. They were on the Golden Path—a path that no one, presumably, had followed for hundreds of years. Hernán Cortés himself had likely been one of the last Europeans to come this way. Hellen wanted to get to the end of the passage as fast as she could, but at the same time she found it incredibly difficult not to stop after every step and examine the reliefs and figures surrounding them. Everything was in perfect condition, and she let her fingers glide over the breathtaking, ornate patterns as she went. The flickering of the torches made the gold look almost liquid.
“Aurum metallicum,” Hellen whispered reverently.
“The metal of light,” Cloutard translated, and Hellen nodded. They could not stop grinning. Everything around them was simply overwhelming.
A relief of three figures adorned with quetzal feathers and jade caught Hellen’s eye. It was a symbol of the highest social rank in the heyday of the Mayan culture. There were gods and godlike kings, and above them stretched a series of celestial symbols known as a “skyband.” She simply had to stop and look.
She was able to identify the central figure by the Mayan glyphs in his crown as a previously unknown king. The figures were enthroned atop the heads of monsters. Other reliefs depicted the king at war against humans, but also battling supernatural hybrids of human and animal. Hellen was mesmerized.
“Come, Hellen. We have to move on. The tunnel seems to get dark again up ahead. Maybe we have reached the end,” Cloutard said, tugging at Hellen’s sleeve.
They moved on, and after another thirty yards, the reflections from the walls and roof of the tunnel indeed began to dim. Ahead, they saw only here and there a flash of gold from underneath a dark covering. The walls seemed to be moving, and after a few more steps they stopped in their tracks in raw dismay.
“François, tell me that is only my imagination,” Hellen whispered, pointing ahead. They stared at the walls in horror as they realized what was covering the gold: the floor, walls and ceiling were crawling with spiders.
“Brown recluses,” Cloutard said glumly. “Their bite destroys living tissue. A few hours after you are bitten, the destruction reaches your bones. I know these creatures from the south of the United States. But there they are relatively small and only bite if they feel attacked. These look bigger. Much bigger.”
“But look, the fire frightens them,” Hellen said. She waved her torch in various directions and the spiders recoiled from the flame. “So let’s give them a little more fire,”
she murmured. She opened her backpack and took out the flare gun she’d used earlier so frighten the jaguar.
“You are not going to fire that thing in—”
Cloutard got no further. Hellen had already pulled the trigger. A huge flame and a flash filled the passage and Cloutard and Hellen turned away. The projectile bounced off the walls like a ping-pong ball until, seconds later, the tunnel was once again dark and silent. Some of the spiders were dead, but most seemed to have just crept away into holes in the walls.
“Quick, François. The tunnel is clear. It’s now or never,” Hellen cried, and she sprinted ahead.
Cloutard, cursing, followed. They ran about fifty yards to where the walls once again gleamed with pure gold, then stopped and checked one another’s clothes. They had to brush off a handful of spiders, but it seemed they had come through unscathed. Neither had been bitten.
“You and Tom are the same kind of crazy,” Cloutard said. “You make a good couple.”
His words made Hellen flinch. They both knew Tom had gone down with the plane, but not if he had survived the crash. Hellen suddenly found it hard to focus on the here and now. As thrilling as the tunnel was, not knowing what had become of Tom was just as crushing.
Tom will make it, she told herself, turning and moving on down the tunnel. “Look, the tunnel gets wider here,” she said. “Maybe we’re almost there.”
“Shhh! I think I hear something,” Cloutard whispered, raising a finger to his lips.
The ducked low and crept on. The tunnel gradually widened until it ended at a gallery overlooking a room about thirty feet below the level of the tunnel. The light from their torches did not carry far. Cautiously, they looked down into the chamber below. Suddenly, Cloutard threw his torch on the ground and frantically stamped out the flames. Hellen did the same.
The Golden Path (A Tom Wagner Adventure Book 4) Page 18
