Inca Gold (Dirk Pitt 12)

"You think that's what we're looking at, a wild goose chase?"

Sandecker shrugged. "You've done your magic. If the ship truly rests in a jungle and not on the bottom of the sea, then the burden falls on Pitt and Giordino to go in that hell on earth and find her."

Giordino contemplated the dried red stain on the stone floor of the temple. "No sign of Amaru in the rubble," he said with an utter lack of emotion.

"I wonder how far he got?" Miles Rodgers asked no one in particular. He and Shannon had arrived from the sacred well an hour before noon on a helicopter piloted by Giordino.

"His mercenary buddies must have carried him off," Pitt surmised.

"Knowing a sadist like Amaru might still be alive," said Rodgers, "is enough to cause nightmares."

Giordino gave a mechanical shrug. "Even if he survived the rocket attack, he'd have died from loss of blood."

Pitt turned and stared at Shannon, who was directing a team of archaeologists and a small army of workers. They were numbering the shattered blocks of stone from the temple in preparation for a restoration project. She seemed to have discovered something in the debris and was bending down for a closer examination. "A man like Amaru doesn't die easily. I don't think we've heard the last of him."

"A grim prospect," said Rodgers, "made worse by the latest news from Lima."

Pitt raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know we received CNN this deep in the Andes."

"We do now. The helicopter that landed about an hour ago belonged to the Peruvian News Bureau. It brought in a team of television reporters and a mountain of equipment. The City of the Dead has become international news."

"So what did they have to report?" pressed Giordino.

"The military and police have admitted their failure to capture the army renegade mercenaries who flew into the valley to slit our throats and remove the artifacts. Nor have investigators tracked down any of Amaru's grave looters."

Pitt smiled at Rodgers. "Not exactly the sort of report that will look good on their resumes."

"The government tried to save face by handing out a story that the thieves dumped the artifacts over the mountains and are now hiding out in the Amazon forests of Brazil."

"Never happened," said Pitt. "Otherwise why would U.S. Customs insist we provide them with an inventory of the artifacts? They know better. No, the loot is not scattered on a mountaintop. If I read the brains behind the Solpemachaco correctly, they're not the kind to panic and run. Their informants in the military alerted them every step of the way, from the minute an assault force was assembled and launched to capture them. They would have also learned the flight plan of the assault transports, and then plotted a safe route to avoid them. After quickly loading the artifacts, they flew to a prearranged rendezvous at an airstrip or seaport where the stolen riches were either transferred aboard a jetliner or a cargo ship. I doubt whether Peru will ever see its historical treasures again."

"A nice tight scenario," said Rodgers thoughtfully. "But aren't you forgetting the bad guys only had one helicopter after we stole their backup?"

"And we knocked that one into a mountain," added Giordino.

"I think if we knew the full truth, the gang of second-rate killers ordered in by the boss who impersonated Doc Miller was followed later by a couple of heavy-lift helicopter transports, probably the old model Boeing Chinooks that were sold around the world. They can lift almost fifty troops or twenty tons of cargo. Enough mercenaries were left on the ground to stow the artifacts. They made their getaway in plenty of time after our escape and before we alerted the Peruvian government, who took their time in mounting an aerial posse."

Rodgers stared at Pitt with renewed admiration. Only Giordino was not impressed. He knew from long years of experience that Pitt was one of that rare breed who could stand back and analyze events as they occurred, down to the finest details. It was a gift with which few men and women are born. Just as the greatest mathematicians and physicists compute incredibly intricate formulas on a level incomprehensible to people with no head for figures, so Pitt operated on a deductive level incomprehensible to all but a few of the top criminal investigators in the world. Giordino often found it maddening that while he was attempting to explain something to Pitt, the mesmeric green eyes would focus on some unseen object in the distance and he would know that Pitt was concentrating on something.

While Rodgers was pondering Pitt's reconstruction of events, trying to find a flaw, the big man from NUMA turned his attention to Shannon.

She was on her hands and knees on the temple floor with a soft-bristled paintbrush, gently clearing away dust and tiny bits of rubble from a burial garment. The textile was woven from wool and adorned with multicolored embroidery in the design of a laughing monkey with hideous, grinning teeth and coiled snakes for arms and legs.

"What the well-dressed Chachapoyan wore?" he asked.

"No, it's Inca." Shannon did not turn and look up at him but remained absorbed in her work.

"They did beautiful work," Pitt observed.

"The Inca and their ancestors were the finest dyers and weavers in the world. Their fabric weaving techniques are too complicated and time-consuming to be copied today. They are still unrivaled in interlocking tapestry construction. The finest tapestry weavers of Renaissance Europe used eighty-five threads per inch. The early Peruvians used up to five hundred threads per inch. Small wonder the Spanish mistakenly thought the finer Inca textiles were silk."

"Maybe this isn't a good time for pursuing the arts, but I thought you'd like to know that AI and I have finished sketching the artifacts we caught sight of before the roof fell in."

"Give them to Dr. Ortiz. He's most interested in what was stolen."

Then lost in her project, she turned back to the excavation.

An hour later, Gunn found Pitt standing beside Ortiz, who was directing several workers in scraping vegetation from a large sculpture of what appeared to be a winged jaguar with a serpent's head. The menacing jaws were spread wide, revealing a set of frightening curved fangs. The massive body and wings were sculpted into the doorway of a huge burial house. The only entrance was the gaping mouth, which was large enough for a man to crawl into. From the feet to the tip of the raised wings, the stone beast stood over 6 meters high (20 feet).