And this time we won’t be giving them away. No matter what comes at us.
Buller was the odd man out, wearing a thin shirt, canvas trousers, and sneakers on his feet. Banks found a flak jacket stowed under a seat and had Buller put it on. He still wished he could leave the man behind; having a civilian along complicated matters.
But I got an order. I’ll follow it. I’m a soldier — it’s what I do.
He went up front and motioned that he wanted to talk. The captain passed him a headset so they could communicate privately. He had to take off his own helmet to wear it, but after a test could hear the captain clearly.
“If you have to hover, how long can you stay?” he asked.
“An hour, Captain, no more than that. But you said the area has an open roadway of paved stone? Landing should not be a problem.”
“It’s the taking off again that has me worried,” Banks replied, but didn’t elaborate. His attention was drawn to the view out of the main window to the front of the pilots. The jungle, a carpet of infinite shades and hues of green, lay across from horizon to horizon with the river winding through it, a great shining snake leisurely going about its business with no concern for the world of men. The only thing breaking above the flat expanse of greenery was a series of rocky outcrops on the far horizon, getting closer so fast that Banks could already make out the pyramid that market the highest point.
“Five minutes,” the Brazilian captain said.
The two choppers circled the temple complex 100 feet above the top of the pyramid. There was no sign any life, no sign of any movement at all. They did two passes to be sure, then the chopper captain had his second craft move to an outcrop a mile away to the north that was big enough for a landing. He turned to Banks and pointed to the widest part of the causeway that ran along the ridge of the hill.
“I will set down there,” he said. “And I will only take off if we come under sustained attack. We will wait for your return there. We have got your back, Captain.”
Banks gave him a thumbs-up, handed back the headset, and went back to his seat for the landing.
It went smoothly and without a hitch. A minute later, the chopper was on the ground, and the squad was getting out of the vessel. The captain passed Banks the same headset they’d used earlier. After a few seconds, he figured out how he could clip the piece to his ear so that he could wear both headset and helmet. Once he was happy that any sudden movement wouldn’t lead to the loss of either, the pilot spoke at his ear.
“This is good for 100 meters line of sight,” he said. “It will not work well in a building or through rock, but we will be here and ready to come to your aid if you call for it.”
Banks gave him another thumbs up, and jumped to the ground, running out from under the rotors to join the squad on the causeway.
The whump of the rotors slowed and ceased when the captain switched off, and Banks was able to speak normally, keeping his voice low as he directed the squad.
“I want a sweep of everything above ground here first,” he said. “Wiggo and Buller with me on the left, Sarge and Cally on the right, and join up at the foot of yon pyramid. Shoot first, question later, and shout if you find anything hinky.”
Buller spoke up, almost shouting.
“We need to get down to the cave with the gold, right now.”
“No,” Wiggo replied, barely above a whisper, but leaning in close to Buller’s face so that his meaning could not be any clearer. “What we need is for you to be a good wanker, shut the fuck up, keep quiet, and not get us killed. Or do you want a skelp?”
Buller wisely went quiet, and followed, sandwiched between Banks and Wiggins, as they headed left toward the first of the tumbled ruins that lined the causeway.
- 18 -
Banks moved slowly toward the nearest doorway opening. The sun was already climbing high, throwing the inside of the building into shadows that were almost black. He switched on the light on his rifle and stepped cautiously forward.
He’d expected crude living quarters, or possibly a storage area for food, so what he found inside surprised him.
The first hint was when his gun’s light reflected back, yellow and gold, from the wall directly ahead. He moved the light around. He had walked into a room some 12 feet square and eight feet high, and every inch of wall and roof was covered in tiles, squares of eight inches each, and all, by the look of it, carved in thick, solid slabs of gold.
Wiggins whistled as he followed Banks and Buller inside.
“What the fuck is this now, Cap? Fucking Eldorado?”
“Maybe it is at that,” Buller said, and Banks turned to see if the man was joking, but he looked deadly serious.
“Legends usually start somewhere in fact,” Buller added.
“Tell me about it,” Banks replied. He shone his rifle barrel’s light around, but there was nothing in the room apart from the carvings on the wall.
“Wait,” Buller said. “Hold the light steady and let me have a closer look.”
There was little sign of the smugness he’d shown earlier; there was now only a wide-eyed face of childlike wonder. For once, Banks could completely understand what the other man was feeling. He did as requested and held the light steady over a patch of the wall. Buller studied it closely.
“I’m no expert,” the man said after a few minutes. “But this looks like some kind of story, maybe a history.”
“If so, it’s one that’ll have to wait until we’re secure,” Banks replied. “Wiggo, next building. Let’s make this a quick sweep. I don’t want us to be still fucking about here when it gets dark again.”
The next building was tumbled in ruin, the roof long gone and only fragments of the walls left standing but they were amazed to see more of the gold tiles, lying, discarded in piles on the ground, with vines and roots growing through them.
“They’ve got so much of it. It has no value to them,” Buller said in a hushed voice, as if the very idea of it appalled him.
“Well it’s no’ as if they’re going to be down the club on a Saturday night blowing the lot on booze, blow, strippers and fags, is it?” Wiggins replied. “Although maybe we should get the kit bags from the chopper and fill them up with some of these wee shiny tiles, Cap? Might help with our pensions?”
Banks laughed.
“Sounds like a fucking plan to me, Wiggo. Maybe on the way back,” he said. “But first let’s make sure this place is as dead as it feels.”
‘Dead’ was exactly how it felt. If Banks hadn’t known better, he’d have said that no one had been here except themselves for many years. It had that same sense of empty loss that he often got from visiting remote and abandoned homesteads back in the Highlands of home. The weather was better here, and they didn’t have mounds of gold tiles just lying around unclaimed in the Scottish hills, more’s the pity, but he felt the same sense of sadness and longing for a past long gone in this place that he did across the sea.
That feeling was exacerbated the farther along the causeway they traveled. There was more gold, more tumbled ruin, and still no sign that any of the buildings had ever actually been lived in. He remembered the tighter-packed buildings they’d passed on the track along the far side of the hill on that first night, and wondered if they’d need to sweep that area too, or whether that would be just as empty and dead as this.
He looked across to the other side of the pathway and saw that Hynd and McCally had advanced almost up to the steps of the pyramid, 20 yards or so ahead of Bank’s threesome.