He snatched the torch out of Raine’s hand and scanned it across the path before them. The ground, as expected, was a jig-saw puzzle of varying sized blocks, but as he brought the torch up, the beam hit one single, giant slab of stone.
He instantly had a flash back to the time he had spent with his father in the ruins of Tiahuanaco on the shores of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. He had spent hours as a young man staring up at the enormous Gateway of the Sun, a giant doorway constructed out of a single piece of andesite. The image of the Staff Deity, a composite male/female entity portrayed holding a staff in either hand, had transfixed his father’s attention for a time, seeking links to Viracocha, the supreme, bearded god of the Andes.
Now, he stood, staring in amazement at an almost identical looking gateway, only this one even larger.
The doorway in the centre was easily twelve feet high and spanned the width of the aqueduct, leaving a narrow path on either side. Attached to the outer edges of the gateway were enormous walls. Their construction was, once again, Andean in style, the familiar jig-saw pattern easily identifiable. Only, the blocks of stone here were enormous, several towering above the two men as they tentatively approached.
The wall reminded King of another Andean ruin, this time the fortress of Sacsahuaman on the outskirts of Cuzco, the ancient Inca capital in Peru. There, several blocks had been estimated to weigh in excess of one hundred tons and King could easily believe that what he saw now was comparable.
But it wasn’t just the incredible structure itself that had captured King’s attention, nor even the promise of what the immense wall protected.
“This is incredible,” he whispered, stepping closer. “The design is Andean, and the Staff Deity is almost identical to Chavin depictions. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say we had stumbled onto an ancient outpost of one of the Incas ancestors.”
Raine glanced at the wall, only half interested. “That’s great.”
“But it’s wrong,” King cut him off.
“What do you mean?”
He moved the light slightly to the left of the carving of the Staff Deity. More carved shapes came into focus, smaller but no less detailed.
“These are hieroglyphs.”
“Great,” Raine shrugged.
“But the Incas and their ancestors never developed writing.” He stepped closer to the gateway. “These are Mayan hieroglyphs. But, what is undeniably Mesoamerican writing doing on an equally undeniably Andean structure?”
“Beats me,” Raine shrugged. “What does it say?”
King translated the ancient text easily. He felt an icy hand clutch his heart. Squeeze tight.
“Roughly translated into terms someone like you would appreciate,” he replied, “it says, Welcome to Xibalba.”
Raine shrugged and started forward. “Thanks.”
King halted him with an outstretched arm. “Xibalba literally translates into ‘Place of Fear’.” Raine glanced at him. King elaborated. “The Mayan Hell,” he said.
Raine’s features crinkled into a less-than-pleased frown. “Well that sounds just peachy,” he complained.
At that moment, a bullet screamed past King’s ear and struck the ground, spitting up sparks. He dropped to his knees as more bullets spewed out of hidden locations, somewhere near the waterfall.
“Turn off the damn light!” Raine spat at him. King fumbled with the switch, plunging them once again into total darkness. But the blackness wouldn’t protect them for long, he knew. With NVGs, the Chinese soldiers would find them again in seconds.
“All things considered, Benny,” Raine said, grasping his arm and dragging him towards the colossal gate. “I’m going to take my chances in Hell!”
14:
Xibalba
Bullets strafed the ancient walls as Raine and King darted through the darkness. They swung around the side of the gate and skidded to a halt just inside the entrance.
“What are you doing?” King asked when Raine held him back from venturing further into the ancient ruins. “We’ve got to keep going?”
“The moment you switch that torch back on, they’ll see us. And I, for one, don’t plan on spending eternity running around aimlessly in the dark in some Inca hell.”
“Mayan,” King felt the need to correct him. Luckily, he couldn’t see the fierce glare Raine shot him through the blackness. “Okay, so how do we get out of here?”
“Same way as the crocs,” Raine replied. Crocodiles weren’t nocturnal animals. They basked in sunlight for hours, their bodies needing the warmth it provided. Their reptilian hosts didn’t spend all day inside the hollowed out interior of a mountain, Raine knew. For such a large colony to have developed and survived, they had to have access to the outside world.
“How are we going to-?”
“Shut up,” Raine snapped at him. He knew it was part of an academic’s nature to question everything, but in a fire-fight it was damned annoying. Right now, he missed the discipline of well-trained soldiers watching his back.
The firing had stopped and a painful silence had descended upon the two men. All of Raine’s senses were on alert, ultra-sensitive. King’s breathing seemed impossibly loud in his ears as he strained to listen for the soldiers’ approach. He focussed past the beating of his own heart, the dripping of moisture and the roar of the distant falls—
There!
The crunch of earth beneath a boot. Quiet, almost silent. But definitely there.
It came again, one stealthy footstep followed by another, cautiously approaching the gate; ten feet away, nine.
He wished he hadn’t lost the night vision goggles in his tumble over the waterfall. At least they would have evened the odds a little. Instead, right now, one heavily armed predator that could see in the dark stalked its totally blind prey.
Feeling with his hands, he reached down and silently took the torch from King while gently tugging him down into a crouch. The archaeologist didn’t resist and, whether or not he had heard the soldier’s approach, he knew enough not to say a word.
Raine took hold of the torch’s shaft, repositioning it in his palm while in his head he pictured the soldier’s position, listening to the sounds of his footfalls.
Crunch.
He was right on the other side of the gateway now. Raine could picture him slowly creeping along the narrow path between the gate and the water’s edge, rifle held before him, NVGs casting a green pall about his surroundings. Even the most highly trained, highly disciplined soldier would be anxious now, not knowing what or who was lying in wait.
The soldier paused for just a fraction of a second, gathering his nerve, and then Raine sensed rather than saw the man swing around the gatepost, rifle scanning the space just above his and King’s heads.
Nathan Raine however, even though totally blind, never hesitated.
Like a striking viper, he jumped to his feet, one arm knocking the soldier’s rifle to the side while his finger thumbed the torch’s ON switch. The beam of light flared in the soldier’s goggles, overloading them and searing his eyes. Raine knew how painful the sudden overload of light through NVGs could be and he took full advantage of the disorientation he knew the soldier now felt. His fist slammed into his belly, doubling him over. Then he brought the base of the torch down against his exposed neck, shattering vertebrae and dropping the man to the ground.
“Raine?” King asked quietly, uncertain of who had won the fight.