Lea spoke up over the comms from the other chopper. “She won’t pay up. I’m telling ya now.”
“I’m sure she will,” Reaper said.
“Ah, get out of it,” the Irishwoman said with a laugh. “She’s tighter than a camel’s arse in a sandstorm. You’ll not get any silver out of her.”
“I can’t say this doesn’t hurt,” Scarlet said. “I’ve always paid my debts.”
Then Lexi’s cool voice drifted over the comms. “So where’s the money?”
“Yeah, Cairo?” Hawke said. “Hand it over.”
Scarlet rolled her eyes and surrendered, pulling a squashed, folded purple banknote out of her jeans pocket and pushing it inside Hawke’s shirt pocket with pursed lips and a withering glance. “Happy now?”
“Funnily enough, I actually do feel a little better.”
Before she had a chance to reply they were on the ground, and Hawke was powering down the chopper and unbuckling his seatbelt.
They climbed out of the chopper and waited while Reaper landed then Mi-171 beside the Bell and then wandered over to meet the others. Lea took a long deep breath of the mountain air as she took in the sunshine. The ruins of the city were a few hundred yards in front of them now, and looming high above it was the volcano.
“Right, let’s get going,” Hawke said. “It’s not far to reach the volcano.”
Scarlet lowered her sunglasses over her eyes from her forehead and looked up. “Shit — did I just see some smoke coming out the top of that thing?”
Hawke sighed. “No, now give it a rest.”
“This is pretty amazing,” Lea said, marvelling at the ruins. “Don’t you think, Ry?”
Ryan said nothing.
Hawke knew what she was trying to do — pull him back into the team, back into the mission… but it was pretty obvious Ryan wasn’t interested. They had all had longer to adjust to Maria’s loss, but Ryan had only been hit with the news a few hours ago, and he was closest to her. The best play was to leave him alone.
Lexi stared up at the ruins ahead of them. “I can’t believe we discovered the Lost City of the Incas.”
“Don’t get cocky,” Hawke said. “Technically Dirk Kruger and his scumbags discovered it because they got here first.”
“I still can’t believe it,” she said. “No matter who got here first.”
They kept up the pace, hacking their way through the jungle with their machetes and making about as good time as anyone would in the circumstances. A tropical rainstorm skirted them to the west and for a few moments they were surrounded by a heavy, humid drizzle, but it quickly passed and they went on unhindered.
They made their way over to the ruins, scanning the area for any sign of Kruger’s thugs, but with no sign of them they continued into the heart of the Lost City. As they got closer they saw there was nothing among the ruins except the broken down stones of the buildings — crumbling limestone and bromeliads crawling over granite blocks.
“I don’t mean to be a spoilsport or anything,” Scarlet said. “But this place isn’t exactly brimming with gold and emeralds.”
“No,” Lexi said, also disappointed. “It’s like someone got here before us.”
“Maybe they did,” Reaper said with a shrug of disinterest. “Enough people have looked for the place over the centuries. All the stories we heard about from explorers are just the failures, peut-être? Maybe the ones who really found it kept the treasure as well as the secret. In which case, mes amis, les carottes sont cuites, non?”
“Eh?” Hawke said.
“It is a fait accompli. There is nothing we can do about it.”
Lea sighed. “At least it means that old bastard Kruger never got his hands on any of it.”
“But what a waste of time, not to mention money,” Scarlet said, and kicked a rock out of the way with the toe of her boot.
“We don’t know anything about the place yet,” Hawke said, trying to keep things together. “We keep going.”
Scarlet spun her head around and drew her gun in one liquid move that took less than a second. “Did you see something move over there in the vines?”
“Like what?” Ryan said, anxious.
“I don’t know. I thought I saw something move.”
“It’s nothing,” Hawke said. “Keep going.”
They passed another few hundred yards of crumbling homes and winding side streets and with each step the volcano that loomed above the houses grew larger and larger in their view.
They stopped as the hill became a steep incline. “This is the base of the volcano,” Lea said.
“A tunnel!” said Lexi.
“No, it’s no tunnel,” Ryan said running his hand over the wall.
“You mean someone carved this?” Lea said. “Holy crap.”
“No, not that either. This is a lava tube. It’s a conduit created when molten lava continues flowing beneath lava that has already hardened. It’s called a pāhoehoe flow, from the Hawaiian for smooth lava.”
“It certainly looks more promising that those knackered old ruins behind us,” Scarlet said, peering inside the tube.
“It’s a tunnel that leads inside a frigging volcano,” Lea said. “This is not promising.”
“Tube, not tunnel,” Ryan said.
Hawke pulled out the Maglite and shone it into the lava tube. As he cast the beam down to the sandy floor he grinned and nodded his head. “I see Kruger and our Syrian friends have been this way — footprints.”
They made their way into the volcano, noticing an increase in the terrific humidity as soon the breeze could no longer reach them. They followed Kruger’s scuff marks until they reached a steep incline in the lava tube.
After scrambling up through the tube they reached a square antechamber constructed of smooth, granite blocks. It was empty with a sand-covered floor and there was one door directly opposite them.
“Looks like the rooms in the Egyptian pyramids,” Ryan said. “Definitely man-made.”
“Let’s keep going,” Hawke said. “We can look at this on the way out.”
They went through the far door and after walking along another short tunnel they emerged into sunlight again. Stretching out ahead of them around the hole leading to the magma chamber in the bottom of the volcano was something that made them all speechless.
“The Lost City!”
“Shit!”
“Buggering hell,” Scarlet said. “It’s made of gold.”
“It really is some kind of utopia,” Ryan said.
“A utopia with Saqqal and Kruger in it,” Reaper said cautiously.
Scarlet started off down the slope toward the golden, vine-covered buildings. “So let’s go and join the party.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
As they walked into the city, they were mesmerized by the stunning metropolis stretching away from them in every direction. It was a wonderful, terrible ghost town and they walked in silence for a long time. The sunlight shone in through the vent in the top of the volcano and sparkled and glittered on the golden, jewel-encrusted walls. It held Lea like a hypnotist’s watch, and she couldn’t lift her eyes away no matter how hard she tried. She didn’t even want to.
“In all my years of doing this,” she said quietly. “I have never, ever seen anything like this place.”
“I want to marry it,” Scarlet said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Reaper said.
“Why is that ridiculous?” she replied, transfixed by the immeasurable beauty and wealth before her. “I read about someone who married his car once, and I want to marry this city.”
“But imagine the prenup,” Lexi said with a sideways glance.
Slowly they made their way through the old streets as they twisted and meandered their way deeper into the abandoned city. Ancient ruins loomed either side of them, their crumbling architecture a sad testament to their incredible age.