Temple (58 page)

He sighed, breathless, and allowed his body to go limp as he
descended into the canopy of lush rainforest trees.
Seconds later, his feet touched the ground and he just fell to his
knees, exhausted.
He looked at the rainforest around him and in a distant corner of
his mind wondered how the hell he was going to get out of
here.
Then he decided that he didn't care anymore. He had just disarmed a
Supernova while falling from a height of 19,000 feet inside a
67-ton main battle tank.
No, he didn't care in the slightest.
And then suddenly the solution to his problem revealed itself in
the form of a small seaplane swooping in low over the trees above
him. A man's hand waved happily from the pilot's window.
It was Doogie and the Goose.
Beautiful.
Thirty minutes later, thanks to a conveniently placed stretch of
river nearby, Race was back on board the Goose with the others,
soaring through the clear afternoon sky high above the
rainforest.
He rested his head against the cockpit window, stared vacantly
through it as they flew. He was absolutely exhausted.
Beside him, Doogie said, 'You know what I think, Profes sor, I
think it's high time we got the hell out of this damned country.
What do you think?'
“Race turned to face him. “No, Doogie. Not yet. There's still one
more thing we have to do before we go.'
SEVENTH MACHINATION
Wednesday, January 6, 1730 hours
The Goose touched down on the river next to Vilcafor shortly before
sunset on January 6, 1999.
After dousing themselves in monkey urine again, Race and Ren6e
headed back to the upper village. They left Doogie and Gaby in the
Goose, to allow Gaby to tend to the young Green Beret's many
wounds.
As the two of them trudged through Vilcafor, tired and exhausted,
Race saw that there were no bodies lying on the street.
Despite the fact that about a dozen Navy and DARPA sci-
entists-plus Marty, Lauren, Nash and Van Lewen—had been killed here
only a few hours previously, no bodies remained.
Race looked at the empty street sadly. He had an idea where the
bodies had gone.
He and Ren6e entered the upper village just as dusk was beginning
to settle over the Andean foothills.
The natives' chieftain, Roa, and the anthropologist, Miguel Moros
Marquez, met them at the moat at the edge of the village.
'I think this belongs to you,' Race said, holding the idol out in
his hands.
Roa smiled at him. 'You truly are the Chosen One,' he said. 'My
people will sing songs about you one day. Thank you, thank you for
returning our Spirit.'
Race bowed his head. He didn't think he was any kind of Chosen One
at all. He'd just done what he had thought was right.
'Just promise me this,' he said to Roa. 'Promise me that when I am
gone, you will leave this village and disappear into the forests.
Men will come searching for this idol again, of that I am certain.
Take this idol far away from here, where they will never find
it.'
Roa nodded. 'We will, Chosen One. We will.'
Race still hadn't actually handed the idol to Roa yet.
'If you will permit me, sir,' he said, 'there is one more thing I
have to do here, and to do it, I will require the use of the
idol.'
The tribe of natives assembled on the spiralling path that
encircled the rock tower.
Night had fallen and they were all thoroughly doused in monkey
urine.
The rapas, Marquez said, unable to return to their lair inside the
temple, had spent the day hiding in the heavy shadows at the base
of the crater.
Race stood on the spiralling path, looking out across the ravine
that had earlier been spanned by the rope bridge.
The rope bridge still hung flat against the side of the tower, in
the same place the Nazis had left it when they had unlooped it from
its buttresses twenty-four hours ago.
One of Roa's nimblest climbersdoubly soaked in mon key urine—-was
sent down to the base of the canyon where he embarked upon a
skilful climb up the rock tower's near- vertical wall.
After a while, he came to the long retrieval rope that dan gled
from the bottom of the rope bridge. He tied it to another rope that
was held by natives standing on the spi ralling path and they then
pulled the retrieval rope over to their side of the ravine.
The rope bridge was quickly secured back into place.
'Are you sure you want to do this?' Ren6e said to Race as he gazed
across at the tower top.
'There's a way out of that temple,' he said. 'Renco found
it. I will, too.'
Then, with the idol in one hand and a torch in the other
and a leather satchel slung over his shoulder, Race led the
way across the swooping bridge.
A team of ten of Roa's strongest warriors followed him,
bearing flaming torches of their own.
Once they were all on the rock tower, Race led them up
to the clearing in front of the temple. There he pulled a water
bladder out of his leather satchel and used it to douse the thyrium
idol.
The idol hummed instantly. A pure, mesmerising sound
that cut through the night air like a knife.
Within minutes, the first rapa arrived at the clearing.
Then a second, and a third.
The massive black cats gathered around the clearing,
forming a wide circle around him.
Race counted twelve of them in total.
He doused the idol again and it emitted its even harmonic tone with
renewed vigour.
Then he took a step backwards, entering the temple.
Ten steps down and he was surrounded by blackness.
The rapas—big, black and menacing—followed him inside, blocking the
shafts of blue moonlight that entered the tunnel from
without.
Once all the cats were fully inside the temple, the ten
Indian warriors outside began to heave on the boulder—as
Race had instructed them to do.
The massive stone groaned loudly as it was pushed
slowly back into place.
Race watched its movement from within the temple.
Gradually, all the moonlight from outside was replaced by the
shadow of the massive rock and then, with a final ominous thud, the
boulder would move no more.
It now filled the portal, sealing it shut, at the same time
sealing William Race inside the temple with the pack of
ferocious rapas.
Darkness.
Total darkness, save for the flickering orange glow of his
torch.
The walls of the tunnel around Race glistened with mois ture. From
somewhere deep within the temple, he heard a steady, echoing
drip-drip-drip.
It was absolutely terrifying, but strangely Race felt no
fear.
After all he'd been through, he was beyond being afraid.
The twelve rapas—visions of evil in the strobe-like light of the
torch—just stared at the humming idol in Race's hand,
entranced.
With his torch held high above his head, he made his way down the
spiralling tunnel at the base of the stairs. It bent down and to
the right in a slow, descending curve. Small alcoves lined its
walls.
Race passed the alcove that he'd seen the last time he had been
inside the temple, saw the mangled skeleton with the cracked skull
lying in it. The skeleton that he had assumed was Renco but which
he now knew to be the wily old con quistador who had stolen Renco's
emerald pendant.
He came to the bottom of the spiralling passageway and saw a long
straight tunnel stretching ahead of him. It was the tunnel in which
von Dirksen and his men had met their grisly end.
The rapas emerged from the ramp behind him—silent, looming,
ominous—barely even making a sound as they slunk along on their
soft padded paws.
At the end of the long straight tunnel, Race came across
an enormous hole in the floor. It was roughly square in shape and
at least fifteen feet wide, taking up the entire tunnel before
him.
Out of it came one of the most repulsive odours he had
smelled in a long, long time.
He winced at the smell as he evaluated the wide hole in
the floor in front of him.
On the far side of it he saw nothing but wall—solid, stone wall—and
inside the hole itself he saw nothing but inky blackness.
Just then, however, he saw a series of hand and footholds
that had been cut into the hole's right-hand wall. They'd been
carved in such a fashion—one on top of the other— that they created
a ladder-like mechanism which a person could use to climb down into
the hole.
After dousing the idol once again with his bladder full of
water, Race put his flaming torch in his mouth and then, using the
hand and footholds cut into the wall, slowly began to climb down
into the dark stinking hole.
The rapas followed him, but they didn't bother using the footholds.
They just used their scythe-like claws to climb down the walls of
the hole after him.
About fifty feet later, Race's feet touched solid ground
again.
The foul stench was stronger here, to the point of being
overwhelming. It smelled like rotting meat.
Race grabbed the flaming torch from his mouth and
turned away from the wall he had just scaled.
What he saw took his breath away.
He was standing inside an enormous hall of some kind,
a gigantic stone-walled cavern that had been carved out of
the belly of the rock tower.
It was absolutely spectacular.
An enormous, rock-walled cathedral.
Its high vaulted ceiling soared into the air at least fifty
feet
above the floor, disappearing into darkness. It was supported
by a set of stone columns that had been fashioned out of the
rock. A flat stone floor stretched away from Race. It also
disappeared into shadow.
The walls of the cathedral, however, were its most stunning
feature.
They were covered with primitive carvings—pictographs similar to
those that adorned the portal up on the surface.
There were pictures of rapas, pictures of people, pictures of rapas
killing people. Tearing their limbs off, ripping their heads off.
In some of the carvings, the screaming humans being mauled by the
cats clutched piles of loot in their hands, even as they were being
killed.
Wanton greed, even at the moment of death.
Interspersed among the carvings on the walls were a series of stone
alcoves that had all been carved in the shape of rapas'
heads.
Thick cobwebs covered each alcove, so that it looked as if
see-through grey curtains had been lowered over the carved rapas'
jaws.
Race went over to one of the alcoves, sliced through the
cobweb across the rapa's mouth.
His eyes widened.
A small shelf-like podium had been carved into the wall inside the
rapa's bared jaws, On it sat a lustrous golden statue that had been
fashioned in the shape of a fat man with an enormous
erection.
'Good God…' he breathed as he stared at the statue.
He scanned the hall around him. There must have been forty such
alcoves scattered around its walls. And if there was an artefact in
each one, then it would be a treasure that was worth…
It was Solon's treasure.
Race looked at the ornate alcove in front of him, looked at the
carved rapa's head, snarling viciously at him.
It was as if the builder of this temple were daring the
greedy
adventurer to reach inside the cat's mouth to grab its
treasure.
But Race didn't want any treasure.
He wanted to go home.
He stepped away from the fearsome-looking alcove, out
into the centre of the enormous stone cathedral, holding his
“
torch aloft.
And then he saw the source of the foul odour that had
assaulted his nose.
'Oh, Christ,' he breathed.
It lay on the far side of the cathedral, and it was huge.
It was a pile of corpses—a high, ugly mountain of bodies.
Human bodies.
There must have been at least a hundred of them, and they were all
in various states of dismemberment. Blood slicked the walls all
around them in such copious quantities that it seemed as if someone
had painted them with it.
Some of the bodies were naked, others were partially clothed—some
had had their heads ripped off, others their arms, others still had
had their entire torsos gnawed in two.
Bloodied bones littered the area, some of which still had chunks of
uneaten flesh clinging to them.
To his horror, Race recognised a few of the bodies.
Captain Scott—-Chucky Wilson—Tex Reichart—the German general, Kolb.
He even saw Buzz Cochrane's body lying upside-down on the pile. The
entire lower half of his torso had been chewed off.
More curiously, however, Race saw a large number of
olive-skinned corpses on the pile.
Natives.
And then suddenly he saw a small hole in the wall beyond the grisly
pile of bodies.
It was roughly circular in shape, about two-andhalf-feet in
diameter, the width of a broadshouldered man.
Race immediately recalled seeing a similarly shaped stone up on the
surface earlier—on the balcony-like path behind the temple—a
peculiar round stone amid all the square-shaped ones, a stone that
appeared to have been
slotted into a cylindrical hole of some sort. Oh, no, Race thought,
realising.
It wasn't a hole…
It was a chute.
A chute that started up on the surface and ended here, in the
enormous stone cathedral.
And in an instant, the question as to how the rapas had sur vived
for four hundred years inside the temple had an answer.
In his mind's eye, Race recalled Miguel Marquez's words: 'If you
hadn't survived your encounter with the caiman,
your friends would have been sacrificed to the rapas.'
Sacrificed to the rapas.
Race stared at the circular hole in the wall, his eyes widening in
horror.
It was a sacrificial well.
A well into which the natives from the upper village
threw offerings to the rapas.
Human offerings.
Human sacrifices.
They would throw their own people down here.
But it probably didn't stop at that, Race thought as he gazed at
the inordinate number of olive-skinned bodies that lay on the pile
of corpses.
The natives probably threw their dead—and the dead of their
enemies—down here as well, as another way of appeasing the
rapas.
And in times of real shortage, Race imagined, the rapas pr.obably
ate each other.
Just then, he saw five more rapas lying on the stone floor beyond
the pile of corpses, next to a small, square-shaped hole in the
floor.
The five rapas were staring right at him, entranced by the steady
hum of the wet idol.
Standing in front of them were about ten much smaller cats—-cubs,
rapa cubs each about the size and shape of a tiger cub. They also
stared at Race. It seemed as if they had all stopped in mid-play as
soon as they had heard the idol's mesmerising drone.