Excavation (9 page)

She followed the zigzagging line of lanterns, lights flickering past as she ran. As she spotted the ladder's base, she heard a low grunting coming from the shaft to the surface. It was Gil. It sounded like he had almost reached the plaza above.

With her goal in sight and a freshening breeze from above encouraging her, Maggie sped faster.

Suddenly, words echoed down to her: “Swallow this, you
hijo de puta
!”

Maggie froze as a hard object pinged and bounced down the shaft to land at the foot of the ladder. She stared in disbelief at the green metallic cylinder. It rested in the mud beside the wooden beam that acted as the main shaft support. The grenade!

Maggie cartwheeled back toward Sam. He grunted as she fell against his chest. “Back…back…back…” she chanted.

The group tumbled, tangled in each other's arms, away from the ladder.

“What—?” Sam said in her ear.

With adrenaline fierce in her veins, she shoved Sam and the others into a side chamber.

The blast caught them at the entrance. The concussion and explosion of air propelled them all across the room. They struck the far wall and fell to the stone floor in a pile of limbs.

With the lamps flickering around them, Maggie rolled up to her knees. Past her ringing ears, she heard Ralph groan beside her. Maggie took stock of her own injuries. She seemed to be unscathed, but as she viewed the damage done by the grenade through the settling dust, a moan escaped her throat, too.

They were trapped!

The passage that led to the last ladder was now a tumble of rock and dirt. The grenade had collapsed the tunnel to the
surface, taking out a good section of the first level's ceiling. Stones lay in a jumble from the triggered landslide.

Around her, the remainder of the ruins grumbled and groaned with the shift in stresses. Thirty feet of earth pushed to collapse more of the subterranean ruin.

What were they going to do?

Then the lights flickered a final time and died. Blackness swallowed them up.

“Everyone okay?” Sam asked numbly, his voice exaggerated by his deafened ears.

Norman answered, “Fine. I'm buried thirty feet underground…in a tomb. But otherwise, I'm fine.”

“Okay here, too, Sam,” Ralph added, his usual bravado dimmed.

Sam coughed on the thick dust in the air. “Maggie?”

She could no longer answer. She felt her limbs stiffen and begin the first of the characteristic tremors. She fell back upon the stone floor as the seizure grabbed her body and dragged her consciousness away.

The last she heard was Norman's strangled cry. “Sam, something's wrong with Maggie!”

 

Gil fled from the blast in the pit, the roar ripping through the quiet jungle. Smoke and debris, sweeping up into the night, chased him down the slope to the floor of the camp. Though the loose stones cut his bare feet, he scrambled down the stairs, cursing himself for abandoning his boots below. Why hadn't he tossed his footwear and rifle free of the booby trap before he jumped? But he knew the answer. He had panicked.

Overhead, a flock of frightened parrots scattered across the beam of one of the nearby spotlights. The blaze of blue-and-red plumage across the black night startled him. As the single explosion echoed away, the jungle answered the grenade's challenge with bird screeches and monkey calls.

The jungle had awakened—as had the camp below.

Lights swelled within several of the workers' cheap tents. Shadows already moved inside as the sleepers awakened. Even one of the students' tents blossomed with the warm glow.

Weaponless and with no companions, Gil dared not try to take the camp alone. He would have to gather other men and return quickly to eliminate the
americanos
and their workers. At least the grenade had managed to bring down the only entrance to the subterranean ruins. The bounty below should be protected until he could return with men and construction tools to dig it free. Not concerned about “damaging the fragile site,” his team could have the treasure hoard plucked in short order. A day or two at the most.

Yet, before Gil could gather more men, he had one more mission to complete here at the camp. Reaching the cluster of tents, he slipped into the darker shadows between two of the workers' rough shelters. Faces began to peek out of tent flaps. Their eyes were surely on the plume of dirt still smoking from the excavation site.

No one spotted Gil.

As he slipped behind the tents, the whispered squabble in the guttural Quechan tongue could be heard from the neighboring tent. A shrill voice also called from where the students kept their more expensive shelters. “Guillermo! Sam! What happened?” It was the pompous leader of these
maricon
students.

Gil ignored the growing exchange of voices. From a pile of stacked work tools, he silently removed a pickax and shearing knife. Crossing to the rear of one of the shelters, Gil used the knife to slice a new entrance. His sharp blade hissed through the thick canvas. Slipping through the hole, Gil entered the tent with his pickax.

He studied his quarry—the satellite communication system. Luckily, he did not need to wreak havoc on the entire assembly. It had a weak link. The small computer itself. Much of the other equipment had spare parts, but not the
CPU. Without it, the camp would be cut off from sounding the alarm or calling for help.

Gil raised the pickax over his shoulder and waited. His fractured collarbone protested the weight of the iron tool—but he did not have long to pause. Again Philip Sykes's angered voice barked frantic orders from his tent flap, clearly scared to leave the safety of his shelter: “Sala, where the hell are you?”

As the student yelled, Gil drove the ax's spike into the center of the computer. Cobalt sparks bloomed in the shadowed interior of the tent, but they quickly died away. Gil did not bother hauling the pickax free or checking to see if his sabotage had been noticed. He simply ducked back through the sliced rear of the tent and darted away.

With all eyes turned toward the smoking tunnel on the plaza above, Gil slipped into the jungle fringe unseen, knife in hand and revenge in his heart.

He clenched the blade's hilt in a white-knuckled fist.

No one bested Guillermo Sala—especially not an ancient Incan idol!

 

“Hurry, Sam!” Norman's voice was frantic in the darkness.

In the stygian darkness of the temple ruins, Sam dug through his bag of research tools. None of them had thought to bring a flashlight. He would have to improvise. Blind, his fingers sifted through the clinking bottles. His palm finally settled on his buried Wood's lamp. It was the ultraviolet light source used to illuminate his deciphering dyes. Pulling it free, Sam clicked it on.

Under the glow of ultraviolet light, an eerie tableau appeared. Dust, which still hung in the air from the explosion, fluoresced like snow in the odd purplish light but did little to obscure the others. The teeth, whites of the eyes, and pale clothing of his companions all shone with an unnatural brightness.

Norman Fields knelt beside Maggie. She stared at the
ceiling, her back arched off the stone, her heels drumming on the ancient floor. Norman held her shoulders, while Ralph hovered over them like a dark phantom. Norman glanced up at Sam. “She's having some type of seizure.”

Sam scooted beside them. “She must have hit her head. Maybe a bad concussion.” He lifted his lamp to examine her eyes, but the ultraviolet light did little to illuminate her pupils. Under the glow, her facial muscles twitched and convulsed; her eyelids fluttered. “I can't tell for sure.” Sam examined his companions' faces.

None of them knew what to do.

Small noises of strangulation escaped Maggie's throat.

“Aren't you supposed to keep her from swallowing or biting her tongue or something?” Ralph said, uncertain.

Sam nodded. Already Maggie's face had taken on a vaguely purplish hue. “I need a gag.”

Norman reached to his back pocket and extracted a small handkerchief. “Will this work?”

Sam had no idea, so he simply took the scrap of cloth and twisted it into a rope. He hesitated as he reached toward Maggie, uncertain what to do. A small sliver of saliva trailed from the corner of her mouth. Though slipping an iron bit in his horse's mouth was second nature to him, this was different. Sam fought back his fear.

Gently he tried to push Maggie's chin down, but her jaw muscles were clenched and quivering. It took extra force to pry her mouth open, more than he would have imagined. Finally, he used a finger to roll the tip of her tongue forward. Her mouth was hot and very wet. He cringed but worked the handkerchief back between her molars, pinning her tongue down and keeping her from gnashing.

“Good job,” Norman congratulated him.

Already, Maggie's breathing seemed more even.

“I think it's ending,” Ralph said. “Look.”

Maggie's heels had stopped their drumming, and her back relaxed to the floor.

“Thank God,” Sam muttered.

After a few more seconds, Maggie's trembling stopped. An arm rose to bat weakly at the empty air. She blinked a few times, her eyes glazed and blind. Then her gaze settled on him, and suddenly Sam knew Maggie was back. She stared at him, her anger bright.

Her fingers found Sam's hand, the one holding her gag in place. She shoved him away and spat out the gag. “Wh…what are you trying to do?” She rubbed roughly at her lips as she sat up.

Norman saved Sam from having to explain. “You were having a seizure.”

Maggie pointed to the saliva-soaked handkerchief. “So you all tried to suffocate me? Next time just roll me on my side.” She waved away their explanations. “How long was I out?”

Sam found his voice. “Maybe two minutes.”

Maggie frowned. “Damn.” She crossed to the wall of tumbled stone and clay that blocked the way out of the buried temple.

From her lack of surprise or concern at the seizure, it dawned on Sam that her attack was not from a blow to the head. He found his voice, his own anger freeing his tongue. “You're an epileptic.”

Throwing back her hair, Maggie turned on him. “Idiopathic epilepsy. I've had attacks periodically since I was a teenager.”

“You should have told someone. Does Uncle Hank know?”

Maggie looked away. “No. The attacks are so infrequent that I'm not even on medication. And it's been three years since I've had a seizure.”

“Still you should have told my uncle.”

Fire edged her words. “And be kicked off this dig? If Professor Conklin knew about my epilepsy, he would never have let me come.”

Sam met her heat with his own. “Maybe you shouldn't have. Not only is it unsafe for you, but you've put my uncle at risk. He's both responsible and liable for this dig. He could be sued by your relatives.”

Maggie opened her mouth to argue, but Norman interrupted. “If you're done debating medical histories and the finer points of tort law, might I point out that we are now buried under thirty feet of unstable rock?”

As if to emphasize his words, stones groaned overhead, and a slide of dirt hissed from between two large granite slabs and trailed to the floor.

Ralph moved forward. “For once I agree with Norman—let's get our butts out of here.”

“My point exactly,” Norman added.

Sam frowned at Maggie once more. Emotions warred in his chest. He did not regret his words—Maggie had a responsibility to tell someone—but he wished he could go back and erase the anger from his outburst. He had been frightened for her, his heart squeezed into a tight ball, but he had been unable to voice such a thing aloud. So instead, he found himself snapping at her.

Sam turned away. In truth, a part of him understood her desire to maintain her secret. He, too, would have done anything to remain on this dig—even lie.

He cleared his throat. “Philip and the others must have heard the explosion. When they find our tents empty, they'll know we're down here and come looking. They'll dig us out.”

“Hopefully they'll do so before we run out of air,” Norman added.

Ralph moved to join the group now huddled before the collapsed section of the tunnel. “I hate putting my life in Philip's hands.”

Sam agreed. “And if we survive, we'll never live it down.”

In the dead quiet of the tomb, stones could be heard creaking and groaning overhead. Sam glanced up, raising his
lamp. Dirt trickled from between several stones. The explosion had clearly destabilized the ruins of the pyramid. Reexcavating this site to rescue them might bring the entire temple down around their ears, and it was up to Philip Sykes to realize this.

Shaking his head, Sam lowered his lamp. He could not imagine a worse situation.

“Did you hear something?” Norman asked. The photographer was staring now, not at the blockage of debris, but back behind them, deeper into the temples.

Sam listened. Then he heard it too and swung around. A soft sliding noise, like something being dragged along the stone floor of the ruins. It came from farther into the maze of tunnels and rooms. Beyond the edge of his light, from the total darkness, the noise seemed to be coming closer.

Maggie touched his arm. “What is it?”

With her words, the noise abrubtly stopped.

Sam shook his head. “I don't know,” he whispered. “But whatever it is, it now knows we're here.”

 

Philip Sykes was hoarse from yelling. He stood in his bare feet at the flap of his tent, robe snugged tight to his slim figure. Why was no one answering him? Outside the tent, the camp was in turmoil after the explosion. Men ran across the shadowy ruins, some armed with bobbing flashlights, others with work tools. No one seemed to know what had happened. Spats of native Indian dialect were shouted from the top of the Sun Plaza, where the cloud of dust was finally dissipating. But Philip understood only a smattering of Quechan words. Not enough to decipher the frantic calls and answers.