“Bloody hell, Cap,” Wiggins whispered in the dark. “What kind of shite have you led us into this time?”
Buller answered.
“We need to kill them,” he said. “We need to kill them all, right now.”
“Bugger that for a lark,” Wiggins said. Banks hushed him to quiet and pulled Buller back into the doorway, getting up close and keeping his voice soft and low.
“I’m not here to murder civilians for you,” he said.
“Civilians? Who said anything about fucking civilians? These aren’t people, you idiot. Don’t you see? They’re fucking snakes, and they’re hiding from the sun in here waiting for night.”
As soon as Buller mentioned it, Banks knew the man had to be right. He left the doorway and went back over toward the woman, getting as close to her as he had to Buller seconds before. Up close it was obvious, especially when he lifted the goggles and studied her under the light from his rifle.
Her pupils had a slit running down the iris, yellow and golden, and the veins at her neck pulsed as blackly as the ones he’d seen on Giraldo before the change came over him. She didn’t blink, even when he shone the light directly in her eyes, although a thin, forked tongue slid from between her lips and she hissed as she breathed.
Banks moved to the man beside her; he had exactly the same symptoms, down to the slithering tongue when light was shone in his eyes. Banks backed away to the squad in the doorway.
“For once, it seems that this wanker’s right,” he said. “They’re all infected.”
“It’s not an infection,” Buller said. “It’s some kind of magic.”
“Fucking snake magic bullshit,” Wiggins said. “Aye, that’ll be right.”
Once again, Banks hushed them into quiet.
“Whatever it is, we’re getting out of here. About turn.”
Buller almost shouted.
“We can’t leave yet. We need to kill them.”
“Not going to happen,” Banks said softly. “This is a job for doctors, not soldiers.”
“I demand you kill these fuckers,” Buller said, and this time he shouted. It rang and echoed in the chamber. The cadence of the heavy breathing around them got faster, and in one of the corners, something heavy moved.
“If you don’t shut the fuck up, right now, I’ll shoot you in the knee and leave you down here with them,” Wiggins whispered, and even through the night goggles, Banks saw the blood leave Buller’s face and the fear grow in his eyes.
“You wouldn’t dare,” he whispered back.
“Just fucking try me,” Wiggins replied.
When Hynd and McCally led them back upstairs, Buller hurried behind them, as if keen to put plenty of space between himself and Wiggins.
Banks had them stop only as they approached the exit hole back up to the altar room.
“Cally, you’re up,” he said, pointing to the rotting timbers of the gear mechanism. “Can you rig this somehow so that it will close at our backs, and stay closed unless we fuck about with it from above?”
McCally cast an eye over the mechanism.
“Give me the sarge and five minutes and we’ll see what we can do?”
“Get to it then,” Banks said. “But keep your eye on the stairwell. Once these fuckers start to move, they move fast.”
He led Buller and Wiggins up into the altar room, then out onto the top of the pyramid where they sucked in some welcome fresher air.
“You’re making a big mistake,” Buller said as Banks handed Wiggins a cigarette and they both lit up.
“Maybe,” Banks said. “But I’m a soldier, not a murderer, and I’m not about to start now, snakes or no snakes. Not when I can trap them down there, and do this.”
He tapped at his ear and called up the chopper pilot.
“Still here,” he said.
“I am pleased to hear it, Captain,” the reply came. “Site secured?”
“We’ve still got more of a sweep to do,” he replied. “But I need a favor. I need you to get a medical team on standby to come in as soon as we give the all clear. We’ve got some kind of contagion among the locals here that’s going to need a lot of help.”
The pilot didn’t ask any questions, accepting Banks’ word.
“I will make the call as soon as you check off, Captain.”
“Thank you,” Banks replied. “I’ll check back in within the hour. Hopefully, it’s all plain sailing from here on in.”
“I still think this is a mistake,” Buller said as they went back into the altar room.
“Aye, we heard you already,” Wiggins replied. “My offer still stands if you want a bullet in the knee or a skelp.”
Buller didn’t get time to reply as McCally and Hynd came up the steps into the room. McCally held a thick, frayed rope that stretched back down the hole.
“Give this a hard tug, then let go,” he said, handing it to Banks. “Then cross your fingers. That shit down there’s as rotted as my old grannie’s front teeth. I cannae guarantee it’s going to take the weight.”
“Stand back then,” Banks said, and pulled hard on the rope. He heard a loud clunk below them, wood against wood, and let go of the rope at the same time as it was pulled hard from his hand. The sound of rock grinding on rock echoed around them, and the altar stone slid slowly back into place. As if from a distance, they heard crunching and splintering as wood split and something below tumbled away down the stairwell.
“The proverbial spanner in the works,” McCally said with a smile. “Nobody’s coming back up unless we shove this block of stone out the way from up here.”
“Good job, Cally,” Banks said. “Take five and have a fag. Then we’ll head down below, and get this wanker his cave of gold.”
- 20 -
The top run of steps down the passage at the rear of the altar room were still slippery with oil, but the rest of the descent went without a hitch. They wound their way down, firstly to the cells where they’d been held earlier, then descended in the dim winding stairwell. Now that it was daylight outside, they had enough light coming in the slits of the windows to show them the steps ahead. They didn’t meet any resistance all the way to the foot of the stairs and arrived in the cavern minutes later.
The first thing that Banks noticed was that there was no body on the floor in the doorway. The dead man was gone.
“I ken he didn’t get up and walk,” Wiggins said. “You cut his chest and belly to ribbons then burned his insides out. So where did the buggering thing go?”
“Eaten, is my guess,” Buller said. “Eaten by his pals. They’re fucking big snakes. It’s what fucking big snakes do.”
It wasn’t the floor where Buller had his attention focused, but on the ceiling and walls of the cavern. Now, with more light available and daylight streaming in the doorway, the extent of the seam was even more impressive. The wide band ran, six feet thick in places, fully across the whole extent of the chamber.
“I’m going to be as rich as fucking Croesus. This could go all the way up through the hill,” Buller said in whispered awe. “It’s probably why they built the temple here in the first place.”
“I doubt that,” Banks said in reply. “You saw the rooms up on the causeway. They didn’t worship the gold; they treated it as something to use in building work, a canvas for their stories.”
“It must be the gold. Why else would they put such a bloody huge temple in the middle of the Amazonian jungle?”
“You said it yourself,” Banks said. “Some kind of snake worship. Magic, I believe was the word you used? There’s something else here we haven’t got to the bottom of yet.”