He had expected the darkness to shroud his vision, forcing him to scale the limestone by feel only. But a strange light was forming below him. He turned and stared down into the water.
The pool was emitting an eerie phosphorescent green light. No chemist, Pitt could only assume the strange emission was caused by some sort of chemical reaction from the decaying slime. Thankful for the illumination, however dim, he continued his grueling climb upward.
The last 3 meters (10 feet) were the worst. So near, yet so far. The brink of the sinkhole seemed close enough to touch with his outstretched fingertips. Three meters, no more. Just ten feet. It might as well have been the summit of Mount Everest. A high school track star could have done it in his sleep. But not Pitt. A few months on the low side of forty, he felt like a tired old man.
His body was hard and lean, he watched his diet and exercised just enough to maintain a steady weight. There were the scars from numerous injuries, including gunshot wounds, but all the joints still functioned in a reasonably satisfactory manner. He'd given up smoking years ago, but still indulged himself occasionally with a glass of good wine or a tequila on the rocks with lime. His tastes had changed through the years from Cutty Sark scotch to Bombay gin to Sauza Commemorativo tequila. If asked why, he had no answer. He met each day as if life-was-a-game and games-were-life, and the reasons for doing certain things were hermetically sealed and buried inside his head.
Then, when he was within reach of the sinkhole's edge, he dropped the loop attached to the C hook.
One moment stiffening fingers were tugging it from the limestone, the next it was falling toward the water where it entered the weirdly glowing algae layer with hardly a splash to mark its entry. In combination with the pick hammer, he began using the pockets of limestone as toe-and handholds. Near the top he swung the hammer in a circle above his head and hurled it over the edge of the sinkhole in an attempt to implant the pick end into soft soil.
It took four tries before the sharp point dug in and remained firm. With the final reserve of his strength, he took the line in both hands and pulled his body up until he could see flat ground before him in the growing darkness. He lay quiet and studied his surroundings. The dank rain forest seemed to close in around him. It was dark now and the only light came from the few stars and a crescent moon that breached the scattered clouds and the intertwined branches of the crowded trees. The dim light that filtered down illuminated the ancient ruins with a ghostly quality that was equaled by the sinister, claustrophobic effect of the invading walls of the forest. The eerie scene was enhanced by the almost complete silence. Pitt half expected to see weird stirring and hear ominous rustling in the darkness, but he saw no lights or moving shadows nor heard voices. The only sound came from the faint splatter of a sudden light rain on the leaves.
Enough laziness, he told himself. Get on, get moving, find out what happened to Giordino and the others. Time is slipping away. Only your first ordeal is over. That was physical, now you have to use your brain. He moved away from the sinkhole as fleetingly as a phantom.
The campsite was deserted. The tents he'd observed before being lowered into the sacrificial well were intact and empty. No signs of carnage, no indications of death. He approached the clearing where Giordino had landed the NUMA helicopter. It was riddled from bow to tail by bullets. Using it to fly for help was a dashed hope. No amount of repair would put it in the sky again.
The shattered rotor blades hung down like distorted arms twisted at the elbow. A colony of termites couldn't have done a better job on a decaying tree stump. Pitt sniffed the aroma of aviation fuel and thought it incredible the fuel tanks had failed to explode. It was too painfully obvious that a group of bandits or rebels had attacked the camp and blasted the craft into scrap.
His fears lessened considerably at discovering the gunfire he'd heard in the sinkhole was directed against the helicopter and not human flesh. His boss at NUMA's national headquarters in Washington, D.C., Admiral James Sandecker, wouldn't take kindly to the write-off of one of the agency's fleet of aircraft, but Pitt had braved the feisty little sea dog's wrath on numerous occasions and lived to tell about it. Not that it mattered what Sandecker would say now. Giordino and the archaeology project people were gone, taken captive by some force unknown to him.
He pushed aside the entry door that sagged drunkenly on one hinge and entered, making his way to the cockpit. He groped under the pilot's seat until he found a long pocket and retrieved a flashlight. The battery case felt undamaged. He held his breath and flicked on the switch. The beam flashed on and lit up the cockpit.
"Score one for the home team," he muttered to himself.
Pitt carefully made his way into the cargo compartment. The hurricane of shells had torn it into a jagged mess, but nothing seemed vandalized or removed. He found his nylon carry bag and pulled out the contents. His shirt and sneakers had escaped unscathed but a bullet had pierced the knee of his pants and caused irreparable damage to his brief boxer shorts. Removing the shorty wet suit, he found a towel and gave his body a vigorous rubdown to remove the sinkhole's slime from his skin. After pulling on his clothes and sneakers, he then rummaged around until he came upon the box lunches packed by the chef on board their research ship. His box was splattered against a bulkhead, but Giordino's had survived intact. Pitt wolfed down a peanut butter sandwich and a dill pickle and drained a can of root beer. Now, he felt almost human again.
Back in the cockpit, he unlatched a panel door to a small compartment and pulled out a leather holster containing an old .45-caliber automatic Colt pistol. His father, Senator George Pitt, had carried it from Normandy to the Elbe River during World War II and then presented it to Dirk when he graduated from the Air Force Academy. The weapon had saved Pitt's life at least twice in the ensuing seventeen years.
Though the blueing was pretty well worn away, it was lovingly maintained and functioned even more smoothly than when new. Pitt noted with no small displeasure that a stray bullet had gouged the leather holster and creased one of the grips. He ran his belt through the loops of the holster and buckled it around his waist along with the sheath of the dive knife.
He fashioned a small shade to contain the beam of the flashlight and searched the campsite. Unlike the helicopter, there was no sign of gunfire except spent shells on the ground, but the tents had been ransacked and any useful equipment or supplies that could be carried away were gone. A quick survey of the soft ground showed what direction the exodus had taken. A path that had been hacked out by machetes angled off through the dense thickets before vanishing in the darkness.
The forest looked forbidding and impenetrable. This was not an expedition he would have ever considered or undertaken in daylight, much less nighttime. He was at the mercy of the insects and animals that found humans fair game in the rain forest. With no small concern the subject of snakes came to mind.
He recalled hearing of boa constrictors and anacondas reaching lengths of 24 meters (80 feet). But it was the deadly poisonous snakes like the bushmaster, the cascabel, or the nasty fer-de-lance, or lance-head, that caused Pitt a high degree of trepidation. Low sneakers and light fabric pants offered no protection against a viper with a mean streak.
Beneath great stone faces staring menacingly down at him from the walls of the ruined city, Pitt set off at a steady pace, following the trail of footprints under the narrow beam of the flashlight. He wished he had a plan, but he was operating in the unknown. His chances of dashing through a murderous jungle and rescuing the hostages from any number of hard-bitten bandits or revolutionaries were plain hopeless.
Failure seemed inevitable. But any thought of sitting around and doing nothing, or trying somehow to save himself, never entered his mind.
Pitt smiled at the stone faces of long-forgotten gods that stared back in the beam of the flashlight. He turned and took a last look at the unearthly green glow coming from the bottom of the sinkhole. Then he entered the jungle.
Within four paces the thick foliage swallowed him as if he'd never been.
Soaked by a constant drizzle, the prisoners were herded through a moss-blanketed forest until the trail ended at a deep ravine. Their captors drove them across a fallen log that served as a bridge to the other side where they followed the remains of an ancient stone road that wound up the mountains. The leader of the terrorist band set a fast pace, and Doc Miller was particularly hard pressed to keep up. His clothes were so wet it was impossible to tell where the sweat left off and the damp from the rain began. The guards prodded him unmercifully with the muzzles of their guns whenever he dropped back. Giordino stepped beside the old man, propped one of Miller's arms over his shoulder, and helped him along, seeming oblivious to the pummeling provided by the sadistic guards against his defenseless back and shoulders.
"Keep that damned gun off him," Shannon snapped at the bandit in Spanish. She took Miller's other arm and hung it around her neck so that both she and Giordino could support the older man. The bandit replied by kicking her viciously in the buttocks. She staggered forward, gray-faced, her lips tight in pain, but she regained her balance and gave the bandit a withering stare.
Giordino found himself smiling at Shannon, wondering at her spirit and grit and untiring fortitude. She still had on her swimsuit under a sleeveless cotton blouse the guerrillas had allowed her to retrieve from her tent, along with a pair of hiking boots. He was also conscious of an
overwhelming sense of ineffectiveness, his inability to save this woman from harm and degradation. And there was also a feeling of cowardice for deserting his old friend without a fight. He'd thought of snatching a guard's gun at least twenty times since being forced away from the sinkhole. But that would only have gotten him killed and solved nothing. As long as he somehow stayed alive there was a chance. Giordino cursed each step that took him farther and farther away from saving Pitt.
For hours they fought for breath in the thin Andes air as they struggled to an altitude of 3400 meters (11,000 feet). Everyone suffered from the cold. Although it soared under a blazing sun during the day, the temperature dropped to near freezing in the early hours of morning. Dawn found them still ascending along an ancient avenue of ruined white limestone buildings, high walls, and agricultural terraced hills that Shannon never dreamed existed. None of the structures looked as though they were built to the same specifications. Some were oval, some circular, very few were rectangular. They appeared oddly different from the other ancient structures she had studied. Was this all part of the Chachapoya confederation, she wondered, or another kingdom, another society? As the stone road followed along raised walls that reached almost into the mists rolling in from the mountain peaks above, she was astounded by the thousands of stone carvings of a very different ornamentation than she had ever seen. Great dragonlike birds and serpent-shaped fish mingled with stylized panthers and monkeys. The chiseled reliefs seemed oddly similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics except that they were more abstract. That unknown ancient peoples had inhabited the great plateau and ridges of the Peruvian Andes and constructed cities of such immense proportions came as a thrilling surprise to Shannon. She had not expected to find a culture so architecturally advanced that it erected structures on top of mountains as elaborate or extensive as any in the known ancient world. She would have given the Dodge Viper that she bought with her grandfather's inheritance to have lingered long enough to study these extraordinary ruins, but whenever she paused, she was roughly shoved forward.
The sun was showing when the bedraggled party emerged from a narrow pass into a small valley with mountains soaring on all sides. Though the rain thankfully had stopped, they all looked like rats who had barely escaped drowning. They saw ahead a lofty stone block building rising a good twelve stories high.
Unlike the Mayan pyramids of Mexico, this structure had a rounder, more conical shape that was cut off at the top. It had ornate heads of animals and birds carved into the walls. Shannon recognized it as a ceremonial temple of the dead. The rear of the structure merged into a steep sandstone cliff honeycombed with thousands of burial caves, all with ornate exterior doorways facing onto a sheer drop.