Excavation

“If we want to test this,” Sam said, anxious to be under way, “we’d better hightail it. Dawn is only a few hours away.”

Maggie nodded, reluctantly pulling her gaze away from the jungle.

Sam led the way toward the terraced ruins. With the rain forest so subdued, their footsteps on the granite stones seemed unusually loud. Sam found himself walking carefully, afraid of disturbing the silence, as though they were strolling through a graveyard at midnight. He was glad when they finally reached the summit of the Sun Plaza. Light shone up from the excavated shaft.

Limned in the light were two shadowy figures—one thin and one wide. Norman and Ralph. They stood apart from one another.

The ex-linebacker raised a hand in greeting. He pointed toward the shaft. “Who left the lamps on?”

Maggie shook her head as she climbed onto the flat-topped plaza. “I know I switched them off.” She surveyed the ruins around them. “That feckin’ Guillermo probably turned them on during his rounds and left ‘em on. Where is he anyway? I thought he was supposed to be guarding this place.”

“He’s probably in the forest watching out for those looters from last night. Maybe he was the one who spooked all those birds.”

The jungle remained deathly still. Norman eyed the black forest. “I never liked the dark. I get the willies alone in my darkroom at home.”

Ralph teased him with a remarkable rendition of the Twilight Zone theme. Norman pretended not to hear.

Sam climbed down first while Maggie and the others followed. Once at the bottom of the ladder, he helped Maggie off the rungs.

She turned to him, her head slightly bent, her palm still resting in his. “Did you hear something just then?”

Sam shook his head. All he could hear was his own pounding heart. He found his hand squeezing hers.

Ralph and Norman joined them.

Maggie pulled her hand away, listened for a moment more, then shrugged and took the lead. “Must be those Incan ghosts,” she muttered.

“Thanks, Maggie,” Norman said sourly. “That’s just what I wanted to hear when crawling through the ruins at midnight. I already got a bad enough feeling about this.”

Ralph again started his Twilight Zone theme.

“Bite me, Isaacson,” Norman snapped.

“I don’t lean that way, Normie.”

“Are you sure? You were a football player, weren’t you? What’s with all that ass slapping and piling on one another?”

“Shut up.”

“Jesus,” Maggie exclaimed. “Enough from the both of you. I can’t hear a feckin’ thing.”

Following behind Maggie, Sam ignored them all, lost in appreciating how Maggie moved as she climbed. Through the thin cotton khakis, her legs were muscled and firm and their shapeliness drew his eyes up her curves. Sam swallowed hard and wiped the dampness from his brow with a handkerchief. She’s a colleague, he had to remind himself. Like the army, his uncle frowned on fraternization while in the field. Unwanted attentions among members could strain a small site.

Still, it never hurt to look.

As they traversed to the second level of the dig, Sam marveled at his uncle’s revelation. This was once a Moche pyramid! It was hard to believe. Sam ran a palm along the granite stone walls.

Ahead, Maggie stopped again, pausing with her hand on the ladder that led to the third level. “Now I know I heard something,” she whispered. “Words… and somethin’ knocking…”

Sam strained to hear, but he still heard nothing. He glanced to Ralph and Norman. Both men shook their heads. Norman’s eyes were huge behind his eyeglasses. Sam swung back to Maggie, ready to dismiss her worry, when a scream burst from below, blowing past them like a frightened bird.

Maggie turned wide eyes toward Sam.

Sam swung the Winchester from his shoulder.

Gil studied the metal tiles all around him. The gears of the hidden mechanism ticked and groaned behind the walls.

Miguel shared the gold square with him, crowding Gil’s right side. The squat man’s eyes were wide with fear, and words of prayer whispered from his lips.

Gil ignored him. No gods would protect them there. Survival was up to them. But Gil was not only interested in survival. His eyes kept drifting to the wealth at the feet of the golden idol. Counting, Gil noted that fifteen rows of tiles lay between him and the statue of the Incan king, and fifteen rows lay behind him. Fifteen meters either way. Too far to jump.

He scowled at the trap, sensing that there must be some key to crossing this floor. He turned in a slow circle. The tiles’ pattern was not that of a checkerboard but a complicated crisscrossing pattern of gold and silver squares. It was not unlike some of the geometric patterns found in the work of Incan tapestries and clothing. There was an order, a clue perhaps to a safe course. But what was it?

Juan’s corpse lay upon a neighboring gold tile, where he had managed to drag himself before dying. Blood pooled under his silent form. No new trap had been triggered when Juan had crawled off the silver tile that had originally sprung the trap. Could that be the answer? Were the gold tiles safe and the silver a danger?

There was only one way to find out.

Gil unslung his short rifle and poked it into Miguel’s ribs. “Move,” he ordered.

Miguel glanced from the rifle’s barrel to Gil’s face. “¿Que?”

“Hop over to that gold square,” Gil nodded toward a tile beyond the neighboring silver one. The direction led toward the golden idol. If they were to risk their lives, Gil wanted something to show for their efforts.

Miguel still stood frozen, disbelief and horror on his face.

“Go. Or die right here.” Gil shoved his rifle harder against Miguel.

His squat companion stumbled back a step, his heels just inside the square. “Please, ese, don’t make me do this.”

“Do as I say, or I’ll use your corpse to test the tiles.”

Miguel trembled, gaze swinging between the rifle and Juan’s corpse. Finally, his shoulders sagged. He turned to face the deadly pattern, made the sign of the cross, and jumped. His legs were so wobbly from fear that he barely managed to leap the short distance. He landed hard and fell to his hands and knees on the gold tile.

Gil saw that the man’s eyelids were squeezed tight as he froze in place, expecting the worse. But nothing happened. Slowly, Miguel opened his eyes and pushed shakily to his feet. He turned toward Gil, a feeble smile on his lips.

Gil called to him, relieved to find his theory proving true. “The gold tiles are safe. Stick to them and we can get in and out of here.” Still, Gil was taking no chances on being wrong. He waved his rifle. “Go on to the next, and I’ll follow.”