Operation: Amazon

- 21 -

“Out here, Cap,” Wiggins shouted. “What the fuck is this shite now?”

Out to one side of the building, the private had picked up one of the fallen gold tiles. What was left of it now ran through his fingers, dripping toward the ground.

“I only wanted a wee souvenir,” Wiggins said, as the last of the gold dripped and ran off his little finger. He showed Banks his hands. They were completely clean.

“It’s the same over here, Cap,” Hynd called out from the other side of the causeway. “It’s all running away, heading off somewhere under us.”

“It’s some fucking weird chemical reaction to those bloody bombs you dropped. It must be. If we lose this find, it’s your fucking fault. The seam. We need to check the seam,” Buller said and started to walk toward the cliff track. Wiggins stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“No fucking way,” the private said. “Besides, you didn’t ask nicely.”

“And we’re going nowhere except back to the chopper until we know what the fuck is going on here,” Banks added. He pressed his headset.

“Come and get us,” he said.

“I will be right there, Captain,” came the reply from the chopper. It swooped in at the other end of the causeway from the pyramid. Banks was watching its approach when the ground beneath him took a lurch, a bigger tremor even than the one they’d faced on the cliff path. The remains of the building nearest them collapsed in on itself as the whole causeway rippled from one end to the other, a wave almost a foot high traveling up the whole length toward the pyramid steps. When the wave hit, the pyramid fell in. The whole structure fell away with a roar and crash of falling masonry, tumbling backward off the ridge and down the cliff, joining the cascade of the waterfall in a fall into the river far below.

The chopper closed in on them but the ground was still bucking and heaving; there was no chance of it making a touchdown. The cabin door slid open, and the co-pilot stood there, letting down a short rope ladder.

“S-Squad, we are leaving,” Banks shouted to make himself heard above the din of the chopper’s rotors. “Wiggo, get the wanker onto that bird, one way or another. Don’t take no for an answer.”

He was looking at the chopper, so he didn’t see the start of what happened next. He only had the sarge’s shocked gaze to tell him that there was still more trouble incoming.

He turned to see a huge hole in the hill where the pyramid had been seconds before. The sides, a melee of tumbling worked stone, tree roots, and loose dirt, kept falling inward. The causeway trembled and shook again, almost knocking Banks off his feet, and partially turning him around in the process. The whole ridge on the hilltop bucked and heaved again, and another of the squat buildings tumbled into ruin.

“Wiggo,” he shouted, seeing that Buller still hadn’t moved. “I told you. Get that fucker into the chopper. We’re leaving.”

The private finally moved, dragging a still complaining Buller under the whirling rotors toward the door and the hanging ladder. Even then Buller turned back, tried to push away, shouting something that Banks didn’t hear. Wiggins put a quick end to it by knocking the man hard on the back of the head with the butt of his weapon, then helping the co-pilot to haul a now slumped and sluggish Buller up and into the cabin. Wiggins turned and gave Banks a thumbs-up.

Banks looked around, trying to find Hynd and McCally. Both men were stood still, staring at the remains of the pyramid.

And at the impossible thing dragging itself up and out of the rubble.

To call it a snake would be to deny the magnificence, the majesty of it. The head came up first, even bigger than the cube of the altar room had been on the self-same spot minutes earlier. Two golden eyes, the slits in each pupil fully as big as a man, stared down the causeway directly at the chopper. The mouth opened, showing brilliant white fangs and a flickering tongue that tasted the air as if eager for feeding. The body that rose up below the head was thicker still, 10, thickening to 15, feet wide. It glistened, gold and green and blue and yellow where the sun hit the shimmering scales.

It kept coming out of the hole to wrap around the remains of the pyramid, each slithering coil causing the hilltop ridge to buck. Ground fell in, as if a void had been created underneath them. One of the few remaining buildings to Bank’s right tumbled, not into a hole, but over the edge of the cliff, that was itself eroding rapidly, as if the whole hill might be in the process of coming apart.

McCally raised his weapon, but Banks called out to him.

“Leave it, Cally. I’ve got a feeling we’re going to need a bigger gun. Get to the chopper!”

McCally and Hynd moved to obey, leaving only Banks standing between the snake and the aircraft, which was side on to the beast, not in any position to defend itself against an attack. But for now, the snake was still in the process of pulling itself up and out of the ground, the great coils now entirely obscuring the foundations of the pyramid below it. Banks was more worried about the hill disappearing completely. He struggled to keep his footing as the paved causeway dropped several feet, throwing worked stone and rubble into the air.

“Time to go, Captain,” the chopper pilot shouted in his headset. Banks turned, saw that McCally and Hynd were up and inside the chopper, then had to make a grab for the ladder as a hole formed at his feet. He managed to get one hand on the bottom rung, and looked down to see the whole hilltop collapse below him, a swirling cloud of dry dust almost immediately obscuring the view.

McCally and Hynd hauled him aboard as the chopper rose, inches ahead of the dust cloud. Banks was still looking down when the snake’s head came up, impossibly fast toward them, and snapped its jaws shut only feet below them. A purple tongue, 12 feet and more long, slid out and tasted, almost tickled, the chopper’s landing rails. Banks got his rifle unslung and sent three rounds into the fleshiest part of it, causing the tongue to draw away. The chopper kept rising, clear of the roil and tumble of dust, circling ever higher above what remained of the hill and temple complex, all of which was now little more than a collapsed pile of stone and dirt little higher than the high canopy of the surrounding jungle.

The snake moved through the rubble, its enormous girth and weight demolishing what little was left even further. It seemed to have lost all interest in them now, and was focused on removing all trace of the temple complex from the face of the earth.

“The gold,” Buller wailed.

“Should I fire, Captain?” the pilot said at Banks’ ear. “We’ve got enough to give it a fright if nothing else, maybe even enough to take it down.”

“Negative,” Banks replied. “Get us out of here. I think we’ve done enough damage for one day.”

“My gold,” Buller wailed again, as the snake ground down the last of the hill, and with a surge and whoosh of water, the river ran in to wash away what little was left of the hill and temple complex. There was a new bend in the waterway as the chopper took them away downstream, and not a sign that anything else had ever been there.