The other surprise was the rope bridge that spanned the eighty-foot-wide chasm. It sagged in the middle and looked ready to collapse with the next puff of wind. The main cable was at least a foot around, with two guide ropes that were at shoulder height secured to it with strands of line like the cables of a suspension bridge. Because they were thinner and more susceptible to rot, many of these supports had parted and hung dejectedly from the main hawser.
“You don’t think?”
“It’s possible,” Juan answered Linda’s almost-asked question.
“There is no way I’m crossing that,” she said.
“Do you fancy climbing down, crossing what looks to be class five rapids, and then free-climbing up the other side?” He didn’t wait for her response. “MacD, see if you can tell if Soleil or her partner came this way.”
Lawless was standing next to the stone pillars that anchored the bridge. They’d been set into holes carved into the rock and then reburied so that about four feet of each of them rose above ground level. Bronze caps with dragon heads had been placed over both pillars. One of them had snagged a small patch of red cloth in a dragon’s open mouth, the same shade as the fiber he’d found earlier.
“They came this way, all right,” he said, and showed off his discovery.
“Juan,” Smith called. He held a dull brass shell casing like the ones they’d found at the campsite.
Cabrillo eyed the rickety bridge with little enthusiasm, but he figured that if others had crossed it in recent days, it should support them. He slung his assault rifle over his shoulder as he approached the span. “Keep an eye out,” he said, and grasped the shoulder-high guide ropes.
The main cable was made of woven fiber and felt as hard as iron, though the guidelines had the slimy feel of rotting vegetation. He made the mistake of looking down. Below him the river looked like it was boiling, stones as sharp as knives littering the roaring waterway. Everything seemed jagged and deadly. If he hit the river, he’d be drowned for sure, and an impact with the rocks would split him open like a ripe melon.
Carefully placing one boot in front of the other, and testing each spot before putting his weight on it, Cabrillo inched his way out over the gorge, the sound of water cascading below him like a screaming jet engine. When he hit the halfway point, he glanced back and saw his companions watching him. The cable had sagged enough that he could only see their faces. Linda looked anxious, MacD intrigued, and Smith bored.
Climbing up the catenary-arced rope was trickier than going down, and once Juan’s foot slipped off completely. He clutched at the guideline, which shivered with tension. He slowly rebalanced himself and glanced back with a rueful shrug. He made it the rest of the way without incident and exhaled a long relieved sigh when his feet hit solid ground.
Linda came next, moving with the agility of a monkey, her pixie face set with determination. MacD followed, grinning like this was all a game to him. When he got to their side, Cabrillo looked up to see that Smith had disappeared.
“He said he needed to take a leak,” Lawless said, and went immediately to the vine-shrouded temple entrance. It looked like a perfectly square cave, and the air that whispered from it carried the cold chill of the earth.
Smith emerged from the jungle on the far side and quickly crossed the gorge, with Juan covering him with his REC7 should anyone step out of the forest behind him.
“All set?” Cabrillo asked him.
“Oui.”
“Here!” Lawless’s hushed voice came from inside the temple.
The three quickly stepped inside the stone building, which was just one story and unadorned. Lawless was halfway to a set of stairs carved into the rock that descended down to the lower reaches of the complex. He was hunkered down, holding a flashlight steady on the body of a young man.
He was blond, with a few weeks’ worth of beard, and dressed in sturdy cargo pants, a red long-sleeved T-shirt, and boots. There didn’t appear to be a mark on him. If not for his deathly pallor, it would be easy to imagine he was simply resting. MacD gently pulled him forward. There were four bullet holes stitched across his back. They hadn’t been immediately fatal or he wouldn’t have been able to prop himself against the wall. Or perhaps Soleil had done it as a final act of kindness.
“That is Paul Bissonette,” Smith said. “He was a frequent climbing partner of Soleil’s.”
“Vaya con Dios,” MacD muttered.
“What about Soleil?” Linda asked.
“She either kept running or she’s somewhere down there.” Cabrillo pointed to the stairs.
Flashlight beam preceding them, and pistols drawn because the confines were too tight for their assault rifles, three of them made their way cautiously down the stairs. Cabrillo ordered MacD to remain at the entrance and keep watch.
Unlike the plain walls of the uppermost chamber, the staircase was ornately carved with mythical figures and geometric designs. When they reached the bottom, they found themselves in another windowless room, but this one had a stone bench ringing three walls and a fireplace on the fourth. It was covered in mosaic tiles of deep red and bright yellow that had lost none of their luster over the years. A doorway led to another staircase. This one had windowlike openings that overlooked the cataracts below.
On the next level they discovered small rooms like jail cells that must have been where the priests slept. There was also a kitchen, with a built-in oven, and a fire pit set in the middle that would have been used to boil rice.
Below that was what had to have been the main temple. It had been stripped bare but at some point in the past would have been heavily gilded, with beautiful rugs on the floor and an ornate statue of Buddha high up on a dais overlooking the monks. The windows here all had Juliet balconies of intricate stone.
“Wow!” Linda’s eyes opened wider when she looked out over the gorge.
On the opposite cliff, where they had been when they first spotted the temple, the priests had carved an image of Buddha into the living rock. It was inexactly rendered, as if it were a work in progress. Some parts were beautifully sculpted while other sections were merely crude outlines.
“They must have hung from bosun’s chairs to work on that,” Cabrillo said.
“This place should be a World Heritage Site,” Linda remarked.
“Maybe that’s what Soleil and ...” Why did he keep blanking the poor guy’s name?
“Paul,” Linda offered.
“Maybe that’s what they were doing here.”
Smith was over studying the platform where a statue had once sat. It was constructed of closely fitted wooden planks that had been sanded until they were glass smooth. Wind and rain lashing though the open windows had pitted and stained the side closest, but the one protected by its own bulk still showed the loving craftsmanship that went into making it.
On a closer look, Cabrillo saw that the rougher side had been broken into. The wood had been pried apart, and a few pieces littered the floor amid the leaves that had blown into the room. Because of the age of the wooden dais, it was impossible to tell how long ago the vandalism had occurred. He joined Smith and peered into the hole. It had been a hiding place for whatever the monks considered their holy of holies—a relic of some sort, no doubt.
Had this been what Soleil had come after, a religious treasure that had long since been plundered? It seemed like such a waste. He turned away, shaking his head sadly.
There was one more level to the complex below the main temple. This was the section that had partially collapsed into the river. When they stepped out the doorway from the staircase, they found themselves on a platform maybe ten feet above the raging waters. The stone was wet from the splashing current and slick with moss. Below them was the skeletal framework of the waterwheel, and around them were the remains of a machine made of iron that was so badly rusted it crumbled to the touch.