Temple (12 page)

It was a bouncy ride. Race sat in the back of the truck next to his
bodyguard, Sergeant Van Lewen.
The other members of the team—the three DARPA people, Nash, Lauren
and the hawk-faced physicist, Copeland; Chambers, the
anthropologist; and Gaby Lopez, a striking young Latin-American
woman who was the team's archaeologist-all sat with their own Green
Beret bodyguards.
At one point in the trip, the truck drove along a rise and Race was
able to see down the length of the Cuzco valley.
On the left-hand side of the valley, situated on a grassy green
hill, lay the ruins of Sacsayhuaman, the mighty fortress he had so
recently read about. Its three gargantuan tiers were still
discernible, but time and weather had robbed them of their majesty.
What four hundred years ago had been a magnificent and imposing
fortress fit for the eyes of kings was now a crumbling ruin fit
only for the eyes of tourists.
To the right, Race saw a sea of terracotta roofs—the modern-day
city of Cuzco, its surrounding wall having long since been removed.
Beyond the rooftops lay the barren southern mountains of Peru—brown
and harsh, as
desolate as the snow-capped peaks of the Andes to the north were
spectacular.
Ten minutes later, the truck arrived at the Urubarnba River, where
it was met by a thirtysomething man dressed in a white linen suit
and a cream Panama hat. His name was Nathan Sebastian and he was a
lieutenant in the United States Army.
Behind Sebastian, floating lazily in the river alongside a long
T-shaped jetty, were two military helicopters.
They were Bell Textron UH-1Ns—'Hueys'. But these two Hueys had been
modified slightly. Their long thin landing struts had been removed
and replaced with longer pod-like pontoons that floated on the
surface of the river. One of the choppers, Race saw, had a
complex-looking array of elec tronic devices suspended beneath its
frog-like nose.
The troop truck skidded to a halt near the jetty and Race and the
others piled out of it.
Lieutenant Sebastian walked straight up to Nash. 'Chop pers are all
set, Colonel, just as you requested.'
'Well done, Lieutenant,' Nash said. 'What about our
competitors?'
'A SAT-SN scan was conducted ten minutes ago, sir.
Romano and his team are currently flying over Colombia, en route to
Cuzco.'
'Jesus, they're already over Colombia,' Nash said, biting his lip.
'They're gaining on us.'
'Their estimated time of arrival in Cuzco is three hours, sir,'
Sebastian said.
Nash looked at his watch. It was 5:00 pm exactly.
'Then we don't have much time,' he said. 'Let's get these choppers
loaded and into the air.'
Even as Nash said it, the Green Berets were already load ing six
large Samsonite trunks onto the two Hueys. Once they were stowed,
the twelve team members split up into two teams of six and climbed
aboard.
The two choppers took off from the river, leaving Nathan Sebastian
standing on the jetty, holding onto his stupid hat.
The two Hueys soared over the snow-capped mountain peaks.
Race sat in the back of the second chopper, staring in awe at the
spectacular mountain gorges that raced by beneath them.
'All right, everyone,' Nash's voice said over their headsets.
“I figure we've got about two hours of daylight left. And I'd like
to do as much of this as I can in the light. The first thing we
have to do is find that first totem. Walter? Gaby?'
Nash had Chambers and Gaby Lopez with him in the lead chopper. The
two Hueys were heading out over the moun tains, past the
Paucartambo River, in the general direction of the three river
villages mentioned in the Santiago Manu script: Paxu, Tupra and
Roya.
According to the manuscript, they would find the first totem near
the last-mentioned town, Roya. Now it was up to Chambers and Lopez,
the anthropologist and the archae ologist, to deduce the exact
modern-day location of that riverside town.
And so, Race mused, what had taken Renco Capac and Alberto Santiago
eleven days to accomplish, they did in fifty minutes. After soaring
over the jagged pointed peaks of the Andes for almost an hour,
suddenly—gloriously—the moun tains slid away beneath them and Race
saw a spectacular expanse of flat green foliage stretching away
from him for as far as he could see. It Was an amazing sight. The
beginning of the vast Amazon River Basin.
They flew north-east, low over the rainforest, the rotor blades of
the two helicopters thumping loudly in the silent afternoon
air.
They flew over some rivers, long fat brown lines that snaked their
way through the impenetrable forest. At times, they would see the
remains of old villages on the river banks, some of them with stone
ruins in the centre of their town squares, others just overgrown
with weeds.
At one point in their journey, Race saw the faint yellow glow of
electric lights peeking up over the darkening horizon.
'The Madre de Dios goldmine,' Lauren said, leaning over him to look
at the glow herself. 'One of the largest open-cut mines in the
world, also one of the most remote. It's the clos est thing we'll
get to civilisation around here. Just a great big earthen cone sunk
into the earth. I'd heard it was aban doned sometime last year.
Guess it's been re-op—'
At that moment, there came a flurry of excited voices over the
radio. Chambers and Lopez were speaking animat edly, saying
something about the village immediately beneath the two
Hueys.
The next voice Race heard belonged to Frank Nash. He was ordering
the choppers to land.
The two Hueys landed in a deserted clearing by a riverbank,
flattening the long grass with their downdrafts. Nash, Cham bers
and Lopez all stepped out of their chopper.
Several moss-covered stone monuments stood in the middle of the
grassy clearing. After a few minutes of examining the monuments and
comparing them to their notebooks, Chambers and Lopez agreed that
this was almost certainly the site of the village of Roya.
After the identity of the village was confirmed, Race and the rest
of the team disembarked their choppers and a search of the
surrounding jungle ensued. Ten minutes later, Lauren found the
first stone totem about five hundred metres to the north-east of
the town.
Race stared at the giant stone totem in awe.
It was infinitely more frightening in real life than he had
imagined it to be.
It was about nine feet high and completely made of stone. And it
was covered in vandalism—-crucifixes and Christian symbols that had
been scratched into it by God- fearing conquistadors four hundred
years ago.
The stone carving of the rapa, however, was like nothing he had
ever seen. It was absolutely terrifying.
It was covered in moisture, dripping with it. And this layer of
wetness had a truly strange effect on the carving— it really made
it seem as if the stone carving was alive.
Race swallowed hard as he stood before the decrepit old
totem.
eslts.
With the first totem found, the team hurried back to their choppers
and lifted off quickly.
Nash's chopper led the way, flying low over the jungle, in the
direction of the rapa's tail.
Over his headset, Race heard Nash's voice: '—fire up the
magnetometer. Once we get a reading on the next totem, we'll
revert to spotlights—”
'Got
Race frowned. He wanted to ask someone what a magne tometer was,
but he didn't want to look any more ignorant in front of Lauren
than he already did.
'It's a device used by archaeologists to detect relics
buried underground,' Lauren said, smiling wryly at him.
Damn it, he thought.
'They're also used commercially by resource exploration companies
to detect subterranean reserves of oil and ura nium ore,' she
added.
'How do they work?'
'A caesium magnetometer like the one we're using here detects
minute variations in the earth's magnetic field— variations that
are caused by objects interrupting the upward flow of that magnetic
field. Archaeologists in Mex ico have been using magnetometers for
years to find buried Aztec ruins. We're using ours to find the next
stone totem.'
'But the totems are on the surface,' Race said. 'Wouldn't there be
a problem with the magnetometer picking up trees and
animals?'
'It can be a problem,' Lauren said. 'But not here. Nash will have
set his reader to detect only objects of a certain density and
depth. Trees have a density of only a few thousand
megabars, and animals, since they're made of flesh and bone, are
even less than that. Incan stone, however, is about five times as
dense as the thickest tree in the rainforest—'
'All right, people,“ Nash's voice said suddenly. 'I've got a
reading. Dead ahead. Corporal, the spotlight.'
And so it went.
For the next hour, as the light faded and the shadows from the
mormtains grew longer and colder, Race listened as Nash and
Chambers and Lopez spotted totem after totem.
After the magnetometer formd each totem, they would hover their
Huey over it and illuminate it with the chopper's blinding white
spotlight. Then, depending on which totem they had spotted, they
would either go in the direction of the rapa's tail or to the
creature's left, in the direction of the Mark of the Sun.
The two helicopters flew north, alongside the massive step-like
tableland that separated the mountains from the rainforest.
Just as dusk was setting in, Race heard Nash's voice again.
“All right, we're coming up on the tableland,' he said. 'I can see
a large waterfall flowing over it…'
Race got up from his seat and moved forward, looked out through the
forward windshield of his helicopter. He saw Nash's Huey rise up
over a magnificent waterfall that marked the edge of the
tableland.
“All right… Following the river now…”
The day grew darker and soon all Race could see were the red
tail-lights of Nash's helicopter in front of him, banking and
tilting as the Huey followed the path of the wide, black river
beneath them, the beam of its spotlight playing over the wavelets
on the water's surface. They were heading west now, toward the wall
of mountains that towered above the rainforest.
And then abruptly Race saw Nash's chopper bank sharply to the right
and round a thickly-forested bend in the riven
“Wait a second,' Nash's voice said.
Race peered forward through the windshield. Nash's chopper began to
hover above the riverbank to his right.
'Wait now… I see a clearing. It seems to be covered over with grass
and moss but… Wait, there it is. Okay, people, I can see it. I can
just make out the ruins of a large pyramid-shaped building…
Looks like the citadel. All right, stand by. Stand by for
landing.'
At the very same moment that Nash's Hueys were landing at the town
of Vilcafor, three other—much larger—military aircraft were
arriving at Cuzco airport.
They were aeroplanes—-one giant C-17 Globemaster III cargo plane
and two small F-14 fighters, the big cargo plane's escorts. The
three planes taxied quickly to a halt at the end of the landing
strip, where they were met by a cluster of other aircraft that had
arrived at Cuzco only minutes earlier.
Three massive CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters stood at the end of
the runway, waiting for the Globemaster. The Super Stallions made
for an imposing sight—big and strong, they were the fastest and
most powerful heavyqift helicopters in the world.
The transfer was made quickly.
Three shadowy figures immediately leapt out of the Globemaster and
ran across the tarmac toward the choppers.
One of them—he was smaller than the other two and black, and he
wore a pair of gold-framed spectacles—-carried something under his
arm, an object that looked like a large leather-bound book.
The three of them leapt aboard one of the Super Stallions.
No sooner were they on board than all three choppers lifted off the
tarmac and headed north.
But they did not leave unobserved.
Standing at a distance from the airport, watching the choppers
through a pair of high-powered binoculars, was a
man dressed in a white linen suit and a cream Panama hat.
Lieutenant Nathan Sebastian.
Frank Nash's two Hueys landed gently on the river beside the ruins
of Vilcafor in the fading light of dusk, in a downpour of
torrential rain.
After they came to rest on the river's surface, the two pilots
manoeuvred their birds around so that their pontoons ran aground on
the soft mud of the riverbank.
The Green Berets leapt out onto the shore first, their M16s up and
ready. The civilian members of the team stepped up onto the mud
after them. Race came out last of all and stood at the river's
edge—gunless—staring in awe at the ruins of the citadel town of
Vilcafor.
The village was essentially comprised of a grass-covered central
street that ran for about a hundred yards away from the river. It
was lined on both sides by roofless stone huts that were overgrown
with weeds and moss. The whole town, in fact, was covered in
foliage—-it was as if the rain- forest surrounding it had come
alive and consumed it whole.
At Race's end of the street was the river and the rickety remains
of an old wooden jetty. At the other end of the street—looking down
over the little town like some kind of protective god—were the
ruins of the great pyramid-like citadel.
In truth, the citadel was no bigger than a two-storey suburban
house. But it was made of some of the most solid- looking stones
Race had ever seen. It was that same precise Incan masonry he had
read about in the manuscript. Giant square-shaped boulders that had
been pounded into shape by Incan stonemasons and then set perfectly
in place alongside other, similarly fashioned boulders. No mortar
was necessary and none had been used.
The citadel was made up of two tiers, both of them circular in
shape—the upper level a smaller concentric circle that rested atop
the larger lower one.
The whole structure, however, looked weathered and worn, beaten and
decrepit. The once intimidating stone walls were now laced with
green vines and a network of forked cracks. The whole upper level
was broken and crumbling.
The lower level was still largely intact, but completely overgrown
with weeds. A large doorstone sat at an odd angle inside the
building's main entranceway.