“Jesus,” Emma scoffed. “Check this out.” The sides of the stone altar were carved with images of bound men and women having their heads removed, hearts cut out, and limbs severed.
“Yeah,” Jenny said, trailing her hands along troughs in the top. “Human sacrifice,” she whispered. “Jesus, what the hell where they doing to them?” She pointed at the next carved scene that looked like men carting baskets of body parts.
“Feeding time.” Andrea’s voice was small. She pointed to another image on the altar base. It was a scene of the natives throwing the human meat to some gigantic beast that seemed all teeth. “Looks like the things outside.” Her voice was little more than a squeak now.
“The folly of feeding the crocodile and hoping it’ll eat you last,” Emma said. “And maybe in the end it came for them anyway.”
“Got something,” Steve yelled.
Heads turned, but it was only when he leaned back out from behind a broad piece of stone that looked like the rear wall could they locate him. He ducked back in.
“A passage.” Steve’s voice sounded even further away.
The way the stones had been hewn made it look like an unbroken wall from the front, but the closer you got, you saw that it was just cleverly hidden by perspective.
“Stay there,” Ben shouted as the group crowded towards the rear.
Ben saw that the stonework became rougher and his suspicions that it was at some time some sort of natural opening in the rock were confirmed; Steve stood aside to let Ben ease in beside him.
Steve moved his light beam around. “There’s a lot of roots, and it might have collapsed further in, but I can feel a breeze.”
Ben nodded. “But I can feel air rising, being sucked upwards.”
Steve grinned. “Do you think it goes all the way to the top then?”
Ben returned the smile. “I’m betting on it.” He also shined his light up into the inky black tunnel. It was narrow, no more than three feet wide, and thick roots crisscrossed much of the passage.
Dan wedged his head in next to them, craning his neck to look up. “What are we waiting for?”
“Let me have a look.” Jenny also tried to jam herself in underneath the big men, and Ben could also hear Emma and Andrea jostling as well. He grunted as he extracted himself and jostling bodies immediately filled his space.
Standing back, he checked his wristwatch — it was 4 o’clock, and though they still had a few hours of light left, he didn’t know how long it would take to get to the top, and if they did, arriving at night was an unnecessary risk.
“Good and bad news.” Ben placed his hands on his hips, as a few faces turned to him. “It looks narrow, and potentially passable for us, but not for anything larger than us. That’s the good news. The bad news is, we’d need to clear it to see how far we can get, and hope there’s no choke points further up. Gonna take time.”
Ben snorted as he saw more of the group burrow back in, shining their lights around. “Given we think it’s over a thousand feet to the top of the plateau, it’ll be a hellova climb and will take too long to undertake today.”
Emma pulled back, frowning at him.
Ben shrugged. “Bottom line, I want us there with plenty of daylight left.”
“Ahh.” Dan raised an eyebrow. “The impatient side of my brain says you’re a party pooper. The smart, sensible side, which is the much smaller side, says that makes sense.” He grinned.
“Make camp here?” Emma said unenthusiastically.
“Yeah, sheltered, dry, and secure,” Ben said, calling them back in. “Here’s the plan; Steve, I want you to climb up a few hundred feet, take Emma with you, and see what we’re up against.”
Emma immediately brightened, and he lowered his brow at the man. “Just a few hundred, got it?”
Steve nodded. “Yeah, got it.”
Ben turned to Emma. “And that goes for you too; promise me.”
“O-ookay.” She smiled.
“C’mon, promise,” Ben pressed.
She grinned. “I promise.” She crossed her chest.
Ben nodded. “Dan and Andrea gather wood, make a fire. Jenny and I will see if we can scare up some game. Nino, check this place out to make sure there’s nothing that’s going to surprise us at night.”
The Venezuelan saluted. Ben waited for any further questions and when there was none, he waved to Jenny. “Let’s go hunting.”
Ben’s eyes snapped open; sleep immediately banished — the fire had died down and inside the temple the embers cast a muted, hellish glow that didn’t quite reach into the nooks and crannies of the crumbling edifice.
He lay there for several minutes, breathing evenly and just letting his eyes move slowly of the interior. He had positioned himself at the rear of the room, facing the open doorway. Everyone else seemed to be sleeping peacefully, and there were no unusual sights, sounds, or even odors. But still, a soldier’s intuition put him on edge.
Another sound, this time from outside — twigs snapping. The depth of it told him the twig had been of a fair size so needed a degree of weight to break it.
Ben eased to a sitting position and withdrew his handgun. He retained the old mission habit of sleeping in his boots, so he simply got to his feet and edged along the wall to the door, peering around it.
There was nothing, even though he watched and waited for a full five minutes. But just as he began to relax, there came more sounds, further out. Something or someone was definitely out there.
He crouched and went out fast, moving quickly to the nearest bank of ferns to pause, staying low and once again just using his peripheral vision to try and pick out any movement or out of place shapes or coloring. He exhaled, frustrated and wishing he had night-vision goggles — the thick cloud cover meant no moon and no stars, so it was near pitch darkness.
Ben had fought in these conditions before and was trained to rely on sound, smell, and intuition, but it became a game of luck as well as one of skill and reflexes.
A sound again, and this time the flick of a tiny light — people then — was it a cigarette lighter? He stayed low, burrowing and treading softly as he moved another fifty feet further into the jungle. He smelled the smoke in amongst the humidity and mist of the jungle — cheap, harsh, foreign tobacco. There came a pinprick of orange light — the flare of a cigarette tip as someone drew on the smoke. Ben looped around and came up from behind it.
Sure enough there he was, a big man, broad, and standing close to a tree fern trunk that looked like it was covered in hair. He faced towards the temple as though keeping watch on it. Ben gripped his gun and came to his full height. He eased closer, but the guy was so focused he never heard Ben come up behind him.
“Nice night for bird watching?”
“Вибачте?” The man froze, holding his cigarette in a raised hand.
Ben didn’t recognize the language, and thought it might have been Russian — he tried it. “Русский?” In the darkness, Ben just made out the curl of the lip and shake of head. He tried English.
“You alone?”
The man just shook his head, but more from lack of understanding. He knew Dan spoke a few languages.
“Let’s get you back and see if anyone else can sort you out.”
He saw that the man had a sidearm, and Ben pointed with his free hand, while keeping his own gun pointed at the man’s chest.
“I’ll take that.” He held out his hand.
The man kept his eyes on Ben’s and not his gun. Ben recognized the confidence and professionalism; the muzzle of Ben’s gun would transfix an amateur, but it wasn’t the gun that dictated what happened next, but the thoughts of the potential shooter — and it was the eyes that usually betrayed those.