Mercer stood and brushed off the seat of his pants. “What do you say we head back up to wait for Lauren.”
It took a little extra time to climb the waterfall since an area where the Legionnaires had been working was strictly off limits. The bodies of the Chinese soldiers who’d gone over in the Zodiac had been removed by their allies, although the shredded remains of the rubber boat remained in a pool halfway up the hillside.
As soon as they reached the top, Miguel ran ahead to play with Roddy’s children under the vigilant eye of Carmen Herrara. They were currently skipping stones from the pier Liu Yousheng’s men had built during their occupation of the lake. All of the Chinese equipment had been left behind when Panamanian police units, backed by the Seahawk helicopters from the McCampbell, descended on the excavation site and arrested everyone.
The Chinese overseers had been deported without trial, while the locals had been allowed to return to their villages.
The children’s laughter dispelled the sense of desolation that had settled over the quiet tents and buildings. Several Panamanian soldiers remained as guards in case guerrillas tried to inspect what had taken place on the mountaintop, but they stayed to themselves mostly, leaving Mercer and the French to do their work. Carmen and Roddy had only arrived this morning with the children.
“There you are,” Foch called from a camp stool. He and his men sat around a dormant fire pit with Roddy. Everyone had bottles of beer. He offered one to Mercer. “Care for one?”
“Damned right.” Mercer collapsed into a canvas chair, winded from the long climb. “Where’s Harry?”
“Taking a nap. The heat’s killing him.”
“Me too.” Mercer rolled the cool bottle across his forehead. He checked the time. “Lauren should be here any minute and we can get the show on the road. Henri”—in a sign of respect, Foch had told Mercer his first name—“did you check the rope securing the boats?”
“Plenty long enough.”
“And you’ve double-checked the charges?”
“I did it myself,” Munz answered.
“In that case, we’re set to go.”
Ten minutes later, a low buzzing sound built into the deep thrum of an approaching helicopter. The SH-60 thundered over the lip of the volcano and settled a short way down the sandy beach, throwing up a fog of grit that swirled until the blades began to slow. Mercer was on his feet and running over when four men in khaki field clothes stepped from the chopper’s open door followed by the slender figure of Lauren wearing cut-off jeans and a cropped T-shirt.
The men were from Panama’s anthropology museum and were here to preserve any artifacts. With Lauren’s help they unloaded several suitcases and a couple of heavy-looking crates. It appeared everything Lauren required for her weekend stay fit in the rumpled knapsack she threw over her shoulder.
Unconsciously Mercer ducked as he stepped under the turning blades well above his head. “How was your flight?” he asked, accepting Lauren’s bag.
“Screw the small talk,” she said brazenly, “and kiss me.”
She put her arms around his neck and drew his mouth to hers, pressing her body full length against his. The scientists looked away in embarrassment only to glance back. Mercer’s hand had gone up the back of her shirt, hiking her tee enough to reveal one cup of the bikini top she wore underneath. None turned away a second time.
“Oh, hey,” Lauren exclaimed, a little breathless. “I want you to meet the pilot. She was the one flying cover for us. Jean Farrow, this is Philip Mercer.”
The pilot reached out her open window to shake Mercer’s hand. “Pleasure to meet you.”
“The pleasure’s mine,” he replied. “Without you we’d all be a Chinese torturer’s personal pincushions.”
Farrow turned to Lauren. “I’ve got to get back to the McCampbell . I’ll be back for you on Monday at 0800.”
“Roger. See you then.”
The rotors began to beat again as the party trudged to camp dragging their gear. When the chopper vanished over the volcano’s rim, the jungle exploded in its normal chorus of animal screeches, screams, and calls.
A short time later, everyone was settled around the fire pit and beers had been distributed. Harry was there, surly from his nap, but slowly warming as he worked on his first Jack and ginger ale. No one knew where he’d gotten the ice for his drink since the beers came from a gas-powered fridge that barely chilled the brew. The assembly looked more like a picnic than a scientific expedition, which is exactly what Mercer had wanted. He considered this outing as his payment for stopping the Chinese.
Sitting so her chair touched Mercer’s, her hand in his, Lauren introduced the scientists, the leader of whom was named Hernan Parada.
“I knew your friend, Gary Barber,” Parada said in fluent English. “He’d come to me when he first arrived in Panama to discuss the legend of the Twice-Stolen Treasure. After five minutes I knew I couldn’t persuade him not to waste his time on a search.”
“When Gary wanted something, he was like a pit bull.”
“Yes, exactly. We spoke many times after that and I was convinced he wasn’t just another adventurer hoping to strike it rich. He knew the legends better than I and much more of the actual history of El Camino Royal, the King’s Highway.” The middle-aged scientist sucked life into an ornate pipe and combed stray bits of tobacco from his beard. “However I never thought he would actually find it.”
“He didn’t really. He came close but he never saw the last piece of the puzzle.” Mercer paused. “Nor did he understand the geology of this mountain to see the anomaly.”
The word sent a ripple through the circle of people. “Anomaly?”
“The waterfall. It’s artificial.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean that it isn’t a natural geologic feature. It was built, I assume by the Inca warriors, to dam up this lake and completely flood the caldera.”
“Please, you must start from the beginning.” Parada had let his pipe go out.
“Okay, where the River of Ruin meets the Rio Tuira was a shallow falls that prevented idle boatmen from paddling up the tributary to this mountain. Gary discovered that the falls weren’t natural. It was actually a dam constructed of dressed stone that flooded part of the valley and raised the level of the River of Ruin by about ten feet. During the time of the Spanish rule, the only way to move around the jungle was to stay on the navigable rivers. By building a dam like they did, the Incas made sure the conquistadors wouldn’t pay much attention to the little river.
“Gary was sure this trick meant the treasure was buried somewhere below us on the river. He never considered that the Incas, master builders that they were, took their plan one step further. When they discovered this area, they were confronted by a ringlike mountaintop partially filled with water. But a cleft in one side prevented it from filling completely. By my calculations, that fissure was about forty feet wide at the top and nearly fifty feet tall.”
Despite his desire to hear the rest of the story, Professor Parada interrupted. “How did you calculate this?”
“The angle of repose,” Mercer answered. “The downward slope all around this mountain is a constant thirty-four degrees. Same with the valley flanking the River of Ruin. That is the natural angle that these soils settled into after a few million years of erosion. But the waterfall, at least the top fifty feet, is at a much steeper angle, nearly seventy-three degrees if taken in its entirety.”
“How’d you figure that?” Lauren asked.
“Basic trigonometry. It seemed unlikely that when this volcano grew over the course of countless eruptions that a plug of harder, and thus not easily eroded rock, could be perched like that on top of the gentler lower slopes. It had to be man-made.”