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Linda hunkered down to pull open the collapsed tent fly, her arm reaching out to the zipper like it was on automatic pilot. Her expression was one that said she wanted to be anywhere but here and doing anything but this. Juan stood bent behind her
The viper had been resting in the cool shadow of the tent, just out of view. The vibrations of two large animals’ hearts beating and their lungs breathing had woken it seconds earlier, so when it struck, it did so with the fury of the disturbed.
It moved so fast that high-speed cameras would be necessary to capture its strike. As its hood opened, and its needlelike teeth hyperextended from its mouth, drops of clear venom had already formed on their tips. It was one of the most powerful neurotoxins on the planet and worked by paralyzing the diaphragm and stopping the lungs. Without antivenom, death occurs about thirty minutes after the bite.
The lightning-quick snake aimed straight for Linda’s forearm and was about three inches from clamping its jaws around her skin and sinking its teeth an inch into her flesh when Juan’s hand snapped around its neck and used the awesome power of its uncoiling body to redirect the strike and hurl the serpent into the jungle.
The entire episode took a single second.
“What just happened?” Linda said. She hadn’t seen a thing.
“Trust me,” Cabrillo said, a little breathlessly. “You don’t want to know.”
Linda shrugged and bent back over her task. There were more items inside the tent—food wrappers, a mess kit, more clothes—but there was no body, or even blood. Juan reached over Linda’s shoulder, moving stuff around with his hands, concentrating on what he wasn’t seeing more than what he was. He cast around in the grass, eventually finding Soleil’s satellite phone, or what was left of it. A bullet had passed clean through the sleek high-tech device. He also found a bunch of spent shell casings. 7.62mm. They were doubtlessly fired from AK-47s, the old Soviet Union’s legacy to the world of violence.
He called softly for Lawless and Smith.
“They’re not here,” he informed them. “I think they were ambushed but managed to slip into the jungle. The attackers swept through the camp, took what they wanted—food, apparently, since we didn’t find any—and then went off in pursuit.”
Smith’s expression didn’t change except for a little tightening at the corners of his eyes.
The guy really was made of stone, Juan thought.
“MacD, think you can track them?”
“Give me a sec.” He ambled over to the edge of the jungle closest to the ruined camp. He dropped to a knee, studying the ground, and then examined the branches of the nearest shrubs. He took almost five full minutes before waving the others to him. Cabrillo had used that time to call the Oregon and give Max Hanley an update. In return, Max had told him that everything was quiet on their end.
“See here?” MacD pointed to a broken branch. The pulpy wound had turned ashen. “This here looks like sumac to me. This level of discoloration means the branch was snapped a week ago, maybe ten days.”
“So, you can track them?” Smith prodded.
“Ah sure will try, but no guarantees.” He looked at Juan. “Did y’all find any shoes or boots?”
“No.”
Lawless put himself into the minds of two terrified people running for their lives. They would go in as straight a path as possible. They hadn’t found shoes, which meant they weren’t asleep when the attackers struck, meaning it had probably still been daylight, or dusk. Yes, they would run in a straight line since the pursuers would be able to see if they veered left or right.
He entered the jungle, confident that the rest of his team would keep him covered so he could concentrate on the hunt. Twenty yards in he found a red fiber that had been snagged by a thornbush and knew he was on the right path.
And so it went. At times, there were plenty of signs that a group of people had passed through the forest. At others, they’d go a quarter mile before spotting some vague clue, usually a broken twig or a smeared and barely discernible footprint. The morning wore into a steamy afternoon. They didn’t pause to eat but rather wolfed down protein bars and drank from their camelbacks.
Cabrillo thought they’d come at least ten miles when the jungle ended in a gorge that cut through the landscape like an ax stroke. At the bottom, nearly a hundred feet down by his estimation, raged a churning river that twisted and curled around rocks and fought against the stony banks.
“Left or right?” he asked MacD.
He scanned the ground in both directions, casting ahead nearly a hundred yards. “Oh my,” he called.
The others jogged to where Lawless stood, and they all saw what had given him pause. It was another temple complex like the one they’d seen when they left the main river only this one was built on the opposite cliff, clinging to the rock almost organically. It reminded Cabrillo of the Anasazi cave city at Mesa Verde, Colorado, only this had typical Oriental architectural flairs, with gracefully arching roofs and round, tiered pagodas. Some of the structure must have collapsed over time because under the buildings, down in the river channel, were mounds of dressed stonework, some with decorative carvings still visible. Amid the rubble was the remains of a waterwheel that must have powered a mill inside the temple. Most of it had rotted away, but there were enough of its metal struts and supports left to show it had been enormous.
Very little of the complex rose above the far rim of the chasm, and what little bit did was covered in vegetation, like the vines and creepers that snaked their way down the façade. The original builders had constructed the temple so that it was next to impossible to find.
“I’m definitely getting that Lara Croft vibe,” Linda said as she gazed awestruck at the remarkable feat of engineering.
They moved farther along the edge of the canyon and came across two additional surprises. One was that a village had once stood on this side of the river. Though the jungle was reclaiming it bit by bit, the land had been cleared and diked to form rice paddies, and there were remains of several dozen stilted huts. Most were piles of rotted wood, but some still stood on shaky legs, like tottering old women too proud to rest. The people who’d lived here must have tended to the monks who resided in the temple.
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.
