Gabriel surged to his feet and started for Esparza. He didn’t have a gun, just the knife, but at the moment he didn’t particularly care. He was prepared to kill the man with his bare hands if necessary.
Esparza fired again. The bullet ripped along Gabriel’s side, spinning him around and dropping him to his knees. The wound wasn’t bad—he could breathe, he didn’t think he was bleeding too badly. But it had stopped him, and now Esparza had drawn a bead on him for a finishing shot.
Before Esparza could pull the trigger, though, Cierra let go with a burst of fire that chewed up the ground around his feet. Esparza turned and dashed away into the darkness.
Gabriel struggled to his feet, one hand clamped to his wounded side, aware that the shooting was dying out around him. He saw bodies scattered around the plaza, some Esparza’s men, others wearing the rustic clothes of the Cuchatlán dwellers. He also saw the living, the few who remained standing. And those, thank God, included none of Esparza’s men.
Gabriel saw Fargo’s saber lying on the ground next to the general and Mariella. He picked it up, pausing just long enough to confirm the worst: Both of them were dead.
Before dying, Mariella had managed to reach out and take Fargo’s hand. They lay there together, hands clasped in death, just like in their wedding photograph.
“Gabriel!” Cierra cried as he started toward the jungle. “What are you doing?”
He glanced back at her, saw that she appeared to be all right, and said, “Going after Esparza.”
Then, clutching the saber, he ran in the direction Esparza had fled.
Chapter 24
Esparza didn’t have much of a lead, and Gabriel could hear him crashing through the vegetation ahead. Normally, Gabriel was confident he could have overtaken Esparza fairly quickly, but desperation gave the man strength and speed he might not have had otherwise and Gabriel’s wound slowed him down.
Where were the damn snakes and jaguars when you needed them, Gabriel thought. If Esparza ran into one of those predators, it would slow him down, maybe even finish him off.
It seemed that the only predator abroad in the jungle tonight, though, was man.
Cuchatlán fell far behind them. Gabriel’s heart slugged in his chest, and his lungs struggled to draw in enough of the tropical air. Sweat drenched him. But he kept moving, kept following Esparza’s ragged trail.
If Esparza reached the Blade of the Gods and made it across, he might be able to get back to the trucks. He had probably left some men there, and he might try to return with them to Cuchatlán and finish off the survivors. Even if he didn’t do that tonight, he could flee back to Mexico City, put together another expedition, and start this unholy affair all over again. This had to end now.
Gabriel suddenly broke out of the clinging vegetation and found himself on the grassy verge at the edge of the gorge. Esparza was about a fourth of the way across the sagging rope bridge. Gabriel could see him plainly in the moonlight.
He dragged a deep breath into his body and then called, “Esparza!”
Out on the bridge, Esparza stopped and turned. He flung up his pistol and fired as Gabriel ducked aside. The bullet whipped past Gabriel’s head and whined off into the jungle.
“You’ll never make it, Esparza,” Gabriel called.
“Why not?” the man demanded as he pointed the gun at Gabriel again. “Tell me why I will not return in triumph to Cuchatlán some other day?”
“Because earlier,” Gabriel said, “I cut through all but one strand of one of these anchor ropes, remember?”
And with that, Gabriel swept General Fargo’s saber up brought it slashing down, parting the last of the ropes.
Esparza cried out in terror and rage. He fired his gun but the shot went blindly overhead. The anchor rope, meanwhile, slapped through the air with a loud twang and the planks of the bridge clattered violently as they struck against one another. Esparza dropped the gun and grabbed for the guide rope with both hands, but his fingers slipped off it. He grabbed at the planks as they went out from under him. He screamed as splinters dug into his scrabbling hands, but he couldn’t hold on.
Still screaming, Esparza plunged out of sight into the thick darkness that cloaked the gorge. Gabriel listened hard and heard the screams all the way down…and the ripe thud that ended them.
He stood there for a long moment, breathing heavily and resting his free hand on one of the bridge posts.
Then, still carrying General Fargo’s saber, he turned and started back to Cuchatlán.
Chapter 25
Two weeks later, in the Hunt Foundation brownstone, Michael called Gabriel and Cierra into his office from the library adjacent to it. Cierra had spent quite a few hours in the library since arriving in New York, poring through all the relevant volumes of history and archaeology the foundation possessed.
The days following the battle had seen more tragedy, as the years inevitably caught up to the oldest survivors of Cuchatlán, no matter how much water they drank from the Well. The younger members of the lost city’s population were still alive, but most now wore the look of octogenarians.
The general and Mariella had been laid to rest side by side on a small hill overlooking the valley. Cierra had led the survivors in a prayer while Gabriel stood to one side and watched.
The other dead had been buried as well, with headstones for the residents of Cuchatlán and unmarked graves for Esparza’s men. Podnemovitch was one Gabriel had been particularly glad to see the last of. They’d found the big Russian floating face down; he must have hit his head and been knocked unconscious the second time he fell. The waters of the Well of Eternity might once have held the secret of eternal life, but Podnemovitch had drowned just fine in them.
Leaving Cuchatlán had not been easy. It had required Gabriel to make two dangerous climbs on the sheer rock face of the gorge, one down and one up, the latter with the severed end of the rope bridge strapped to his shoulders. Fortunately the natives had supplied plenty of climbing gear—nothing modern or high-tech, but Gabriel preferred it that way. And the difficult climbs had been as good a way as any for Gabriel to focus his attention on something other than recent events. He didn’t especially want to think about the ordeal Mariella had gone through, or the traumas Cierra had suffered, or the deaths of so many innocents, or the loss of a man unique in history like General Fargo. Not to mention the loss of the Fountain of Youth—the Well of Eternity, what ever.
Instead, he concentrated on the climbs. He was an experienced climber, but the Blade of the Gods would have challenged the best. He took it slow on the way down and slower still on the way back up, resting overnight at the bottom in between. The entire remaining population of the valley was waiting for him when he slowly, carefully put one hand, then the other, over the edge of the gorge. They helped pull him up, secured the bridge, lashed it with new ropes to the anchor posts. They tested it carefully several times with mules before any people dared to cross, and when it held up, they declared it sound. Cierra was a little nervous, but Gabriel walked behind her all the way, one hand at her waist.
An uncomfortable trek of a day and a half brought them to Esparza’s trucks, one of which Gabriel was able to hotwire. From there to the nearest village was a day’s drive, and from there a rickety bus took them to Villahermosa. A public phone had made it possible for Gabriel to call Michael and the foundation’s jet was there nine hours later.
Now, as Michael placed a manila envelope on the desk in front of him, he said to Gabriel and Cierra, “I’ve got the final report on those water samples you brought back.”