Temple (59 page)

Jesus, Race thought, there was a whole community down here.
A community of rapas.
Come on, Will, get on with it.
Right.
“
It was then that Race extracted something else from the .
leather satchel that he had slung over his shoulder.
The fake idol.
Race left the fake idol on the floor at the base of the large
square-shaped hole that had opened onto the cathedral, so that
anyone entering the temple would find it immediately.
He didn't know for sure, but he imagined that that was
exactly what Renco had done four hundred years previously.
All right, he thought, time to get out of here.
Race saw the smaller hole in the floor over by the five female
rapas and their cubs and figured that his best option—apart from
climbing up the sacrificial chute and hoping someone opened it for
him—was to just keep going downwards.
And so with the real idol still humming in his hands, he cautiously
made his way past the five female rapas and their cubs and over to
the small, square-shaped hole in the floor next to them.
He looked down into the hole.
It was about six feet square and it just disappeared straight down
into the rocky floor. Like the larger hole before it, it also had
foot and handholds carved into its ver tical walls.
What the hell, Race thought.
With his torch held firmly in his mouth again and the hum ming idol
shoved inside his satchel, Race climbed down into the narrow
shaft.
After a minute or so, he lost sight of the hole's opening above
him. From then on, except for the small circle of flick ering
orange light that illuminated the shaft around him, he was
surrounded by impenetrable darkness.
A couple of the rapas followed him down, slinking down the walls of
the shaft at the edge of the torch's circle of light,
hanging upside-down above him, keeping pace with him,
glaring at him with their cold yellow eyes.
But they never attacked.
Race kept climbing. Down and down. It felt like he climbed for
miles, but in reality it was probably only a cou ple of hundred
feet or so.
Then, finally, his feet touched ground again.
Race grabbed his torch and held it aloft and found that he was
standing in a small cavern of some sort, bounded on every side by
solid stone walls.
Filling the cavern, however, was a body of water.
It was a pool of some sort—a small pool, bounded on three sides by
walls of stone. On the fourth side of the pool was the flat section
of ground on which Race now stood.
He walked over to the water's edge, bent down to touch it, as if to
see if it was real. The two rapas stepped slowly out from the shaft
behind him.
Race dipped his hand in the water
And suddenly, he felt something.
Not an object or anything like that, but rather a gentle surge in
the water itself.
Race frowned. The water was flowing.
He looked at the entire pool once again and saw that its tiny
wavelets actually moved ever-so-slowly from right to left.
And in that instant, he realised where he was.
He was at the very bottom of the rock tower, at the point where it
met the shallow lake at the bottom of the crater.
Only—somehow—water was flowing in and out of this cav ern.
The idol was still humming in his satchel.
The two rapas watched Race intently.
Then, with a confidence that he had no reason to possess, Race
discarded his flaming torch and stepped into the pool of inky black
water—satchel, clothes and all—and ducked beneath the
surface.
Thirty seconds later, after breaststroking his way through a long
underwater tunnel, he surfaced in the shallow lake at the bottom of
the crater.
He gulped in air and breathed a thankful sigh of relief.
He was outside again.
After he emerged from the base of the rock tower, Race returned to
the upper village. But before he did so, he stopped at the tower
top, at the entrance to the temple. The warriors who had pushed the
boulder back into the portal were gone now, having already departed
for the village, and Race stood before the ominous stone structure
alone.
After a few moments, he grabbed a nearby stone and approached the
boulder wedged inside the portal. Then, beneath Alberto Santiago's
inscription, he scratched a mes sage of his own:
Do not open at any cost.
Death lies within.
William Race, 1999
When he arrived back at the upper village, he found Ren6e waiting
for him at the edge of the moat, standing with Miguel Marquez and
the chieftain, Roa.
Race handed the idol to Roa. 'The rapas are back inside the
temple,' he said. 'It's time for us to go home.'
'My people thank you for all that you have done for them, Chosen
One,' Roa said. 'If only there were more in the world like
you.'
Race bowed his head modestly, just as Ren6e looped her good arm in
his.
'How are you feeling, hero?' she said.
'I think I must have suffered another hit to the head,' he
said. 'How else am I going to explain all those feats of
derring-
do? Must have been the adrenalin talking.'
Ren6e shook her head, looked him squarely in the eye.
'No,' she said. 'I don't think it was adrenalin.'
Then she kissed himunicelyNpressing her lips firmly
against his. When at last she pulled away, smiling, she said,
'Come on, hero. It's time to go home.'
Race and Ren6e left the upper village to the cheers of the
natives.
As they disappeared down into the crater and headed back to
Vilcafor, a muffled scream could be heard from somewhere within the
village far behind them.
It came from the bamboo cage that was tied to the four post-like
trees.
In the cage, lying on the ground, rolling around in agony from the
wounds to his stomach and with both of his hands hacked off, lay
the wretchedNand gagged—figure of Frank Nash.
The natives hadn't killed him on the main street of Vilcafor
earlier. Rather, they had cut off his thieving hands and brought
him up here for more appropriate treatment.
An hour later, the last Indian procession to go to Solon's temple
began. Bodies were carried aloft on ceremonial litters as the
procession made its way across the rope bridge and over to the
temple.
Nash lay writhing in agony on one of the litters, while a series of
other corpses—Van Lewen, Marty, Lauren, Romano, and the corpses of
the entire Navy-DARPA team-occupied other litters. Dead or alive,
any kind of human flesh would appease the cat gods that dwelled
inside the temple.
The whole village gathered around the rear of the temple chanting
in unison—as two strong warriors lifted
the cylindrical stone from its slot in the path, revealing the
sacrificial chute.
The dead bodies were cast into the hole first—Van Lewen, then
Marty, then Lauren, Copeland and the Navy people.
Frank Nash was brought over to the sacrificial well last of all. He
had seen what had .been done with the other bodies and his eyes
widened as he realised what was going to hap pen to him.
He screamed through his gag as the sacrificial priests bound his
feet together. He writhed about maniacally as two Indian warriors
brought him over to the chute.
They put him in feet-first and as he saw the sky for the
last time, Frank Nash went bug-eyed with horror.
The two warriors dropped him into the chute.
Nash screamed all the way down.
The cylindrical stone was placed back into its slot and the natives
left the tower top for the last time, never to return.
Once they arrived back at their village, they began prepara tions
for a long journey, a journey that would take them to a place deep
within the rainforest, a place where they would never be
found.
The Goose soared over the Andes, heading for Lima, head ing for
home.
Doogie sat up front in the cockpit, bandaged but alive.
Race, Ren6e, Gaby and Uli sat in the back.
After about an hour or so of flying, Gaby Lopez joined
Doogie in the cockpit.
'Hey,' she said.
'Hey,' Doogie replied when he saw who it was. He swal lowed,
nervous. He still thought Gaby was seriously pretty and seriously
out of his league. She'd done a great job ban daging his wounds,
treating them with gentle hands. He'd stared at her the whole
time.
'Thanks for helping me with that caiman back in the moat,” she
said.
'Oh,' he blushed. “I¢ was nothing.'
'Well, thanks anyway.'
“No problem.'
There was an awkward silence.
'Sa I was wondering,' Gaby said nervously. 'If you weren't—you
know—seeing anybody back home, maybe you'd like to come over to my
place and I could cook you dinner.'
Doogie's heart almost skipped a beat. He smiled a broad, beaming
smile.
'That'd be great,' he said.
Ten feet behind them, in the passenger section of the plane, Ren6e
lay nestled up against Race's shoulder, fast asleep.
For his part, Race was speaking to John-Paul Demonaco on Earl
Bittiker's cellular phoneare of the redial button.
He brought Demonaco up to speed on everything that had happened at
Vilcafor. From the BKA to the Nazis, to the Navy and the Army, and
then finally, the Texans.
“So, wait a minute,' Demonaco said. “Have you had any mil itary
experience?'
'None at all,' Race said.
“Jesus. What are you, some kind of anonymous hero?”
'Something like that.'
After they spoke some more, Demonaco gave Race the telephone number
and address of the American embassy in Lima and the name of the FBI
liaison there. The FBI, he said, would take care of the trip back
to the States.
After he hung up, Race just stared out the window at the mountains
swooping by beneath him, his battered Yankees cap pressed up
against the glass, his right hand fingering the emerald necklace
that hung from his neck.
After a while, he blinked and extracted something from his
pocket.
It was the thin leather-bound notebook that Marquez had given him
that morning during the banquet.
Race flicked through it. It wasn't very thick. In fact, it
was
only made up of a few handwritten pages.
.But the handwriting was familiar.
Race turned to the first page, started reading.
FIFTH READING
To the worthy adventurer who finds this notebook.
I write to you now by the light of a torch in the foothills of the
glorious mountains that dominate New Spain.
By my amateur reckoning, it is now approximately the Year of Our
Lord 1560, nearly twenty-five years after I first came to these
foreign shores.
To many who might read this work, it will mean nothing to you, for
I write it in anticipation of penning another, fuller account of
the remarkable adventures that befell me in New Spain—an account
that I may not even write at all.
But if I do write it, and if you, oh, brave adventurer— having come
across this notebook through the ministrations of some most noble
natives—have indeed read that account, then what follows will
certainly have meaning for you.
It is close on twenty-five years since my incredible adventure with
Renco, and all of my friends are dead.
Bassario, Lena, even Renco himself.
But fear not, dear reader, they did not die of any foul deeds or
subterfuge. They died in their sleep, all of them,
victims to that villain no man can escape—old age.
Now, I am the last one left alive.
Sadly, as such, I have nothing left to live for in these mountains
and so I have decided to return to Europe. I intend to end my days
in some distant monastery far away from the world, where God
willing, I shall write my amazing tale in full.
I leave this notebook, however, in the good hands of my
Incan friends—to pass on to their children and their chil dren's
children—and to give it only to the most worthy of adventurers,
indeed, only those of a stature commensurate with my good friend
Renco.
That said, owing to the pedigree of those who will read
this account, I shall endeavour in this notebook to dispel some of
the fictions that I intend to include in the larger recounting of
my tale.
After the death of Hernando on the enormous stone
tower, Renco did indeed enter the temple with the two idols, but he
would emerge soon after, from an underwater passage at the base of
the giant finger of stone, safe and sound.
The inhabitants of Vilcafor would abandon their village at
the base of the plateau and relocate to higher ground, to a
new
site above the enormous crater that housed the temple.
I would live with them for the next twenty-five years,
enjoying the company of my friend Renco. Why even that rogue
Bassario, who proved his worth in our final con frontation with
Hernando and his men, became a faithful companion of mine.
But, oh, how I enjoyed my time with Renco. Never have I
had such a good and loyal friend. I feel fortunate to have
bee.n able to spend the greater part of my life in his
company.
Oh, and another small tale for you, noble reader—but
one which I beg of you not to tell my holy brethren.
After a time, I would marry.
And to whom, you might ask? Why, none other than the
beautiful Lena.
Yes, I know!
While I had admired her from the first moment I laid
eyes on her, I was not to know that she entertained similar
feelings toward me. She thought I was a brave and noble man and,
well, who was I disabuse her of that impression?
With her young son Mani—whom Renco doted upon in
the manner of uncles the world over—we made for a won°
derful family, and indeed, soon Lena and I would expand
a.s.
our brood to include two delightful daughters who, I say
with pride, were the spitting image of their mother.
Lena and I would be married for twenty-four years, the
most wonderful twenty-four years of my life. It ended but a few
weeks ago, when she fell asleep by my side, never to wake.
I miss her every day.
Now, as the guides prepare to take me north through the forests to
the land of the Aztecas, I think of my adventures, and of Lena, and
of Renco.
I think of the prophecy that brought us together and I wonder if
indeed, I am one of the people mentioned in it.
There will come a time when he will come,
A man, a hero, beholden of the Mark of the Sun.
He will have the courage to do battle with great lizards,
He will have the jinga,
He will enjoy the aid of bravehearted men,
Men who would give of their lives, in honour of his noble
cause,
And he will fall from the sky in order to save our spirit.