“It’s actually quite eerie,” Lexi said, tracing her finger along a wall as she walked. “I mean, there are so many old houses here, and rooms… I think I can feel eyes on me all the time.”
“You think someone’s watching us?” Reaper said.
“Not exactly… I’m just creeped out by this place, that's all.”
“The architecture is amazing,” Lea said. “Don’t you think, Ry?”
“If you say so.”
“Just a shame Luis never made it,” she said quietly. “Or Professor Balta.”
“Damn right,” Hawke said. “Kruger can pay for that along with everything else as soon as we catch up with him. Maria, Luis, Balta… the way he treated Ryan. He’s going to pay for it all.”
Further in the city, the atmosphere started to change. Somewhere high up above their heads they heard the cry of a king vulture. Looking up, Lexi watched the startled bird leap from a ledge and fly up into the throat of the volcano. It heaved its body into the crater on massive black wings and vanished over the rim.
“Not digging this, Joe,” Lea said.
They turned from the vulture and looked at Lea. “What is it?”
She pointed to what looked like some kind of temple. “Look on the wall — recognize it?”
Hawke recognized it all right. Scratched into the wall above the shrine were two Greek letters: ΆΘ. “Bugger.”
“My sentiments exactly. How the hell is the sign of the Athanatoi carved into a wall on the inside of a lava cave in deepest, darkest Peru?”
“Simple explanation,” Reaper said. “We’re not the first to find this place. The Immortals already got here.”
“And check this out,” Scarlet said, further along the cave wall. “Another set of the Greek letters inside a weird, standing man, and all around him are people on their knees.”
“They’re worshipping him!”
“Worshipping the Athanatoi?”
Their awed silence was broken by the sound of a gunshot and then screaming. The yelling was Kruger, as usual, and he was barking commands once again.
“Where did it come from?” Ryan asked,
“Sodding echo makes it hard to tell,” Lea said.
Reaper turned three-sixty as he looked down all the streets leading away from the temple area. “I think over there, to the north.”
They pushed on, still lit from above but the sun’s illumination was growing weaker. What was bright Peruvian sunshine was now a thin, watery light thanks to the many filters of vines it had to pass through before it reached them far below on the floor of the volcano.
Hawke thought once again about the people who had been following them… He hadn’t told the others because he didn’t want to freak them out, but that time was fast running out. He knew who they were, or at least he knew who he thought they were. They’d been trailing them since they climbed out of the chopper, and yet had stayed almost completely out of sight. If it hadn’t been for his extensive training in jungle warfare he would never had known they were there, on their tail.
He knew they were from some kind of Amazonian tribe. That was obvious, but what intrigued Hawke was the idea that they were simply guarding their home, and that this place was their territory… that Paititi, the Lost City of the Incas, known to the entire world for centuries in countless legends and myths, was simply someone’s home. If that was the truth, then he strongly doubted they’d ever had contact with any other humans, and that could make them either easier to handle, or extremely unpredictable and dangerous. Worse than that, there was no way to know how many of them there were and they had the home advantage. To say it was not an ideal situation was a wild understatement.
Lea sighed. “Where is that bastard Kruger?”
“There!” Scarlet said. “They’re down there.”
“Speak of Cao Cao and Cao Cao arrives,’ Lexi said.
Using the northern city wall for cover they looked down toward the northern edge of the volcano and saw Saqqal and Kruger and the others. The men were standing well back from the bank of a very small river in front of a strange shrine, and all were wearing NBC suits. The shrine was ornate enough at the base, but the top was what freaked them all out — a humanoid figure with two long, twisted horns protruding from its head, a devilish fanged grin on its face and two wild, crazed eyes staring back at the city.
“Okay, two questions,” Lea said. “Why are they wearing those suits, and what the hell is that thing with the horns?”
“Supay,” Ryan said. “The Incan god of death. As for the suits, I can’t help you.”
“Oh, excellent,” Lea said. “I never said anything to you guys but I was so hoping we’d end up fighting another god of death.”
Hawke frowned. “The suits worry me more.”
Saqqal ordered Rajavi to get something out of a large bag and moments later he produced a shining steel container not much bigger than a lunch box. Jawad pointed and said a few words, and in response Kruger and Corzo took a few more steps back from the water.
“What are they doing?” Lexi asked.
Hawke watched the men. “Something tells me they’re not here for the gold and diamonds.”
Scarlet brushed some hair away from her eyes. “Those suits are not a good development in this mission.”
Lea heard nothing, but she felt it.
A sharp, stabbing pain between her shoulder blades.
She turned and gasped when she saw the Indian tribesmen behind them.
Hawke turned but it was too late. At least a dozen warriors were standing around them, all armed with spears and arrows and blowpipes. Their silent footfall had allowed them to creep up within feet of them.
A man with a strange criss-cross tattoo on his face waved his spear in Hawke’s face and indicated he should get up and raise his hands in the air.
Hawke followed the instructions and the others followed suit, and then the tattooed man called out in a strange language and Dirk Kruger looked up. His face was obscured behind the gas mask and hard to see, but Hawke guessed he wasn’t smiling.
The South African archaeologist shouted back a string of commands in the tribesman’s language and the next thing he knew they were being marched down to the river bank with their hands above their heads.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The Syrian general had stopped them at least a hundred yards from the river, more out of concern for the tribe than the ECHO team, and now Hawke stared at Kruger and felt his blood rising. He had faced many enemies in his life, but never had he experienced anything like he was feeling now. The man he was staring at, this bastard, had put Ryan Bale through hell and threatened his young life. Now, he was threatening the lives of the few good friends he had left after the carnage of the Seastead battle.
“What’s the matter, Englishman?” Kruger crowed. “Not used to losing?”
Hawke said nothing.
“The fucking cat got your tongue, or what?” Kruger said. As he spoke, Rajavi padded over to them with a gun in his hands.
Scarlet took a step forward and sneered. “Is that gas mask how Mrs Kruger likes it in bed?”
Kruger gave the order and Rajavi slapped Scarlet into the dirt, and then all the men in gas masks laughed for a few moments. Kruger walked over to them and took a deep breath as he surveyed the gigantic volcano cave. “Think about how many stupid bastards tried to find this place!” he said, and then he raised his voice to a maniacal shout. “And now it’s all mine!”
When his voice had finished echoing off the cave walls, Lea spoke up. “It’s only fitting considering that you’re the biggest stupid bastard of them all.”