Nighthawk

27

Kurt drove the rest of the way at a reduced speed because the suspension had been damaged in the climb and was groaning with every mile. An hour later, they were nearing the ruins.

“This is the turn,” Emma said.

Kurt pulled off the road. The new track was little more than two ruts in the ground, with a long furrow of stray grass standing knee-high between them. It took them into a narrowing valley past small herds of grazing animals and terraced fields abundant with crops. Both sights suggested a large community nearby, though Kurt saw no houses.

“I thought this was an archaeological site,” he said.

Emma nodded. “As did I. Seems more like a working farm.”

As they continued into the valley, the ridges and peaks grew higher and the gorge became narrower. When an encampment of tents appeared in the distance, Kurt pulled over and parked.

“I suggest we walk from here,” he said. “I don’t really want to start off by explaining how our vehicle ended up like this.”

Emma laughed. “You might want to practice that speech; you still have to turn this thing in.”

They climbed out of the battered Rover, pulled backpacks over their shoulders and began a short hike.

On foot, without the roofline of the SUV interfering, the view was spectacular. The excavation was taking place in the closed end of a box canyon. Three high peaks dominated the landscape, towering above the ridgeline around them. The cliffsides were honeycombed with caves and marked with several distinct layers of construction. They were also covered with a scaffolding of vertical and horizontal ropes. Another set of wires stretched across the sky like power lines, spanning the canyon from one peak to the next.

“Quite a setup,” Kurt noted.

Emma nodded but didn’t reply. To her, the canyon felt tight and compressed — the kind of place a Western gunfighter might find himself surrounded and ambushed. She kept close to Kurt, aware that the Beretta in her pack would not be easy to reach if something did go wrong.

As they neared the tents, a group of men came out to meet them. They stood in the path, arms folded, eyes squinting, mouths tight.

“Hola,” Kurt said, thrusting out a hand toward the closest of them. “My name is Kurt Austin. I’d like to speak with Urco, if I could.”

The man stood like a statue. He was shorter than Kurt but well built, with muscular forearms and bulbous shoulders. He had a different look from the Peruvians Kurt had known; broader and shorter, with a wider face; more indigenous, less European. His skin was a darker, copper shade and his eyes seemed larger.

He neither responded to the words nor reached for Kurt’s hand.

Kurt lowered his arm and glanced at Emma. “Maybe you’d better try.”

She repeated the greeting in Spanish. Adding something about them being interested in archaeology and the Chachapoya and mentioning that they’d seen Urco on the Internet.

This brought some chatter among the group, and the burly man nodded. “Me llamo Vargas,” he said, unfolding his arms and pointing to the cliff top. “Urco,” he said, before adding in English, “Up there.”

Vargas led them to the base of the cliff. Several ropes dangled down from above.

“I’m not great with heights,” Emma said. “Maybe I’ll just wait here.”

Looking at a climb of several hundred feet, Kurt wasn’t all that excited himself. “I don’t suppose he could come down?”

Vargas just stared.

“Never mind.”

Kurt was given a safety harness and led to the nearest rope, where Vargas handed him a pair of well-used work gloves. They were loose and worn smooth — not exactly fit for gripping a nylon rope.

“To climb?” Kurt asked, making a hand-over-hand motion.

Vargas shook his head. “No… fly.”

He placed Kurt’s hands on the rope and then snapped the safety harness to a hook using a heavy carabiner.

Kurt saw instantly what was about to happen. He gripped the rope as Vargas released a cast-iron clamp attached to a second rope.

A heavy weight suspended up above began to fall and Kurt — whose rope was attached to that weight by means of a pulley — was lifted off the ground and hauled upward.

The initial launch was sudden, but after that the ride was smooth.

He passed small dwellings carved out of holes in the stone. Open rooms were empty except for ladders that went from one level to the next.

Above them, he passed a row of stone figures carved into the living rock; they looked almost bird-like, but with enlarged heads and human bodies and features. They reminded him of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Higher up, in smaller niches and openings, he saw mummified bodies and weaponry; spears and morning stars. These were the mountaintop burial sites of the Chachapoya warriors.

He was approaching the block, tackle and pulley arrangement, which had allowed him to ascend so quickly, when Vargas applied the brake. He came to a stop ten feet from the crest of the mountain. A ladder affixed to the cliffside on his right led the rest of the way.

“You’ve made it this far,” a voice boomed from above. “Now comes the tricky part.”

Kurt looked up to see a face peering over the edge at him. It was weathered and creased from years in the sun, topped by shaggy dark hair and half covered by a gray beard as thick as wool on a sheep. Gleeful, dark eyes focused on Kurt. The man chuckled as he pointed to the ladder.

“I see it,” Kurt said.

“And you see the dilemma?”

Kurt saw that, too. The ladder was several feet beyond his reach. And even if he could stretch out to touch it, he would have to disconnect the safety harness from the rope in order to transfer to the bottom few rungs.

He looked down for a moment and then wished he hadn’t. “Now I know what the window washers on the Freedom Tower feel like.”

He swung his feet toward the ladder, pulled them back in the other direction and then swung them again. The rope began to move, sliding side to side with his motion. On the third arc, Kurt stretched out and grasped the metal frame of the ladder. Pulling himself over to it, he set his feet, wrapped one arm around the closest available rung and then disconnected the harness. Keeping his gaze skyward, he climbed to the top and pulled himself onto solid ground.

The man with the gray beard offered a slight bow. “I congratulate you. It takes most people several minutes before they figure out how to do that. And even then, many are reluctant to let go of the rope. Indeed, one reporter who came to interview me last year flat out refused. He just mumbled a few questions from the harness and then asked to be lowered to the ground as quickly as possible.”

The man allowed himself a belly laugh.

Kurt chuckled and turned to take in the view. They were standing on a platform in the sky, the highest spot for miles around. A major valley loomed to the east and north while the teeth of lower ridges loomed to the west. “That reporter missed out,” he said. “Reminds me of a spot called Eagle’s Nest in Colorado.”

“There was a time when eagles made their homes on this aerie,” the man said. “Long ago.”

Kurt noticed that the man spoke English far better than Vargas had. “Since you’re the only one up here, I’ll assume you’re Urco.” He offered a hand. “Kurt Austin.”

The man looked at Kurt’s outstretched palm and offered an uncomfortable grin. “I am Urco,” he said without moving. “Pleased to meet you.”

For the second time, Kurt pulled his arm back. “Not too fond of shaking hands around here, are you? Is it some custom I’m unaware of?”

Urco shook his head. “I’m afraid we are… germaphobes… of a sort.”

“Really?” Kurt said. “You live out in the wild, dig around in the dirt, unearthing dead bodies, and you’re afraid of germs?”

“I know it sounds strange,” Urco replied, “but, in a way, it’s the bodies that remind us to be wary. These dwellings and burial chambers are from the last stronghold of the Chachapoya people. They held out against the might of the Inca for centuries. They even resisted the conquistadors after Pizarro and his one hundred and sixty-eight men defeated Atahualpa and his six thousand Inca warriors. Unfortunately, their next enemy was one they could not defeat.”

“Disease?” Kurt said.

Urco nodded. “Smallpox. It ravaged the settlements, killing nearly everyone it found. Those who stayed died. Those who fled brought the disease with them, spreading the plague to other villages. I’ve found writings that describe a traveler coming home to a village of two thousand people to find no one alive. Most had died horribly, covered with pustules. Others had killed each other when fighting and chaos set in — as they always do when social order breaks down.”

Urco waved his arms about in a sweeping gesture. “This place was a nation once. And then it was gone.”

Kurt nodded. He knew the grim statistics. European diseases had hit the New World hard. South America fared the worst. According to many experts, smallpox, influenza and measles wiped out ninety-five percent of the indigenous population.

Urco continued. “The men and women who work on this project are all descendants of the Chachapoya. Some nearly pure-blooded. Others, like myself, have a mix of European and indigenous genes. Of course, we’re not really afraid of disease anymore, but avoiding the touch of outsiders is one way we remind ourselves what happened to our ancestors.”

“I assure you,” Kurt said. “I’ve had all my proper shots and inoculations.”

Urco stared at him for a second and then began to laugh. He waved Kurt over and sat down, leaning against a slight rise in the ridge that acted like a natural chair even if it was made of stone. Beside him was a laptop computer. A wire from the computer led to an exterior antenna propped up and pointed at an almost flat angle to the northwest.

Kurt recognized the antenna as a type used to communicate via satellite. “Checking your e-mail?”

“Yes, actually,” Urco said. “The satellite we use is very low on the horizon this time of year. You can’t get a signal from the valley floor. So I come up here every day. Sometimes twice a day. I tell the workers I’m conversing with the gods. They remind me to check my battery level or the gods will never hear me.”

“I’m very impressed with the dig,” Kurt said. “I assume all the ropes are to keep you from damaging the excavation sites.”

“Partly,” Urco said. “The Peruvian government owns the site and they won’t permit us to set foot in the burial areas — something I agree with. As a result, we have to learn what we can by looking in from the outside. That means being suspended midair like an acrobat. I must admit, it sometimes makes things tricky, especially if the wind gets up, which it often does. But after a while, it becomes second nature.”

Kurt studied the setup. Three high summits around the valley acted like the points of a jagged crown. The face of each peak was adorned with a rope and pulley system like the one that had lifted Kurt. The scaffolding ropes were offset from these, and the third set of taut cables stretched from one peak to the next. Highest to middle. Middle to lowest. And from there, back down to the camp below.

The heavy ropes reminded Kurt of the recreational zip line operations marketed to tourists all over the world.

“Your people use these lines to get from peak to peak,” Kurt said.

“Precisely,” Urco said. “They allow quick access from one crest to the next without having to go all the way down and back up again. I make the circuit at least twice a day myself, inspecting the work. It’s a one-way journey, of course — since those crests are lower than this one. But it’s quite exhilarating.”

“I can imagine,” Kurt said. “I’d like to try it.”

“You’re more than welcome to,” Urco said. “But something tells me you didn’t come all this way to talk about ropes and zip lines.”

“No,” Kurt admitted. “I’m looking for some information. But I’m not a reporter. I work for the American government, for an agency called NUMA.”

“Ah, yes,” Urco replied. “I know of this organization.”

“You do?”

“When your work is dependent on grants, you become very familiar with the world’s governmental organizations. Over the last ten years, I’ve applied to every department, of every agency, in every country, in the Americas. Or so it seems. I’ve petitioned NUMA several times. I’m afraid you’ve always turned me down.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Kurt grunted.

Urco laughed. “Not to worry. It’s all part of the business. But tell me, why would an organization that studies the sea be interested in the mountains of Peru and the people who lived there?”

“It’s complicated,” Kurt said. “The other night, you posted a video of a meteor crossing the sky. We wanted to know more about it. Can you tell me what you saw? When exactly it happened? Which direction you were looking?”

“It was very early in the morning,” Urco said. “I get up before dawn each day. The sunrise is my affirmation. That morning, we were going to film a new chamber we’d uncovered. I was checking the cameras to make sure the batteries were charged. As I went about my routine, I looked up and saw a light in the sky. At first I thought it was a star, but it was moving with great speed. I had the camera in my hand, so I pointed and filmed. Pure serendipity. I’m not even sure the video was focused.”

“It was slightly blurred,” Kurt admitted, “but not too bad, considering the circumstances. Which way did it travel?”

Urco pointed to the north. “It came in from that direction, crossed over the clearing and continued south.”

The time interval was right, but the direction seemed off. Although Hiram had suggested the Nighthawk’s right wing appeared to be damaged. That might account for the change.

Kurt chose his next words with care. Urco was obviously a man of great intelligence. He was worldly even if the people who worked for him were relatively simple. Kurt had found truth worked better with such people, better than even the most carefully crafted lies. “What if I told you it wasn’t a meteor in the sky that morning?”

Urco’s face scrunched up, his weathered skin wrinkling, the beard shifting, but hiding any true expression. “I would have to agree with you,” he said. “Up here, one sees shooting stars on a regular basis. No city lights to blind us. I posted the video as a lark, but as the day wore on I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I must admit, my later impression was of something larger and closer. Lower to the Earth, I think.”

“I think so, too,” Kurt said. “I believe you saw an experimental American spacecraft that reentered the atmosphere and went off course. We — and by that I mean NUMA and the United States government — are very interested in finding the crash site. If you help us now, I can promise you, with a high degree of certainty, that you’ll never be turned down for a grant again.”

Urco nodded as if considering the possibilities. “Perhaps we can help each other,” he said. “Have you ever heard of my theory?”

“Afraid not,” Kurt said.

Urco didn’t take offense. “It’s called Civilization Wave Theory. It’s adapted from a field known as cataclysmic evolution, which is the belief that a new form cannot prosper until the existing, dominant form subsides. Mammals, which rule the planet today, were nothing more than scurrying rodents for the first hundred million years of their existence. Surviving only because they were beneath the dinosaur’s majestic notice. But after the Chicxulub meteor impact, the dinosaurs fell. In the blink of an eye, the entire playing field was leveled; indeed, tilted toward small animals with warm blood and fur. And so the rise of the mammals began.”

Kurt nodded.

“My theory suggests that civilization changes in much the same way. Nothing new can rise until the old, dominant power is swept away. Usually by a catastrophe beyond its control.”

“For instance?”

“Being a man of the sea, I’m sure you’re familiar with the sudden collapse of the Minoan empire.”

“Of course,” Kurt said. “After dominating the Mediterranean for centuries, the Minoans were weakened by the tsunamis that hit their island after the eruption of Santorini.”

“Precisely,” Urco said, “but they weren’t wiped out. They still existed. They hung on for centuries in a diminished capacity. But the effect was a changing of the playing field; it was now tilted toward other civilizations of the region. The Mycenaean civilization in particular. Something that would never have happened were it not for the cataclysm.”

Kurt nodded again.

“You see the same thing here,” Urco told him. “Originally, the Chachapoya were more powerful than the Inca, but catastrophe struck them from the outside — not once, but twice.”

Kurt settled in; he loved a good history lesson. “How so?”

“At the end, it was the diseases,” Urco admitted. “But long before that, these people faced another catastrophe. You can find the evidence in a body of water known as the Lake of the Condors, fifty miles from here.”

Kurt had heard something about Lake of the Condors when reading Urco’s website. “There are Chachapoya ruins there as well.”

“Indeed,” Urco said. “Extensive ruins in the cliffs all around it. Everyone knows about these. But what I found is different. Evidence that a major settlement had once thrived on the valley floor, stretching from one side to the other and up into the foothills.”

“This, I hadn’t heard,” Kurt said.

“Few have,” Urco insisted. “Thousands lived within the walls of this city, which made it a very large settlement for its day. They were protected by a strong warrior caste, with some of the finest weapons of the time. I assure you, these men shrank before no one, and for several centuries the Chachapoya were the power of the region, taking tribute from other groups. But then the disaster came upon them.”

“What happened?”

“The city was built in the sheltered area between the mountains. It received its water from the snowmelt and a mountain lake, higher up in the range,” Urco said. “A massive earthquake in the eighth century released the contents of that lake all at once. A fifty-foot wall of water crashed into the city in the dark of night. It drowned the city. The people were trapped. They died by the thousands. It was Noah without any warning from God. Pompeii without the ash. By daybreak, there was nothing left. The wealth was gone; the warriors were gone. The city itself was gone. The reign of the Chachapoya, unbreakable at sunset, was swept away by morning. And in its aftermath the Inca began their storied rise.”

Kurt had no idea if there was any merit to the tale, but he found it fascinating. “Were there any survivors?”

“A few hundred,” Urco said. “Those who’d lived higher up in the hills. When they tried to rebuild their civilization, they did things differently, constructing their dwellings in the cliffs instead of on the valley floors, where they felt they’d be safe from any future disaster. At first it was simple logic, but as time went by it became their way, their religion. They became the People of the Clouds.”

“Can’t say I blame them,” Kurt added.

“Indeed,” Urco said. “Who could sleep on the low ground after surviving a night like that?”

“Sounds like you’ve got it all worked out,” Kurt said. “What do you need us for?”

“To help me prove it.”

“By exploring the lake,” Kurt surmised.

Urco nodded. “The Peruvian government has given me a permit but denied all my requests for funding or help. They have a vested interest in not diminishing the appeal of the mighty Inca. And I lack the funds to mount a submerged expedition myself. But I tell you, at the bottom of that lake is a flooded city the likes of which no one has ever seen.”

The idea of unearthing something that would change the accepted history appealed to Kurt, but they had a more pressing issue. “I’m sure something could be arranged,” he said. “You help me, I’ll help you.”

Urco stroked his bushy beard. “I was hoping we could do it the other way around.”

“The problem is, time,” Kurt said. “I have to find this missing aircraft before I do anything else. I don’t say this lightly, but everyone here is in danger until that plane is found.”

Urco looked at him with a powerful gaze. “Why would we be in danger?”

“Because NUMA isn’t the only group looking for the missing aircraft. Agents from several other countries are after it as well. They’ve tried to kill my partner and me several times already. Including on the way up here.”

“On the way up here?” Urco asked, suspicious.

“We were attacked on the road,” Kurt said.

“They could still be following you.”

“Not unless they can fly,” Kurt said. “But others will come. And they’re not the kind of people who are interested in striking deals. They won’t hesitate to torture or kill everyone here to get what they’re after.”

Urco sighed and looked away. “I put nothing past selfish men,” he said. “My research has shown it’s our nature to fight and oppress. But how will helping you protect us? Wouldn’t these other groups be more likely to resort to violence if they knew we had chosen sides?”

“All they care about is the missing aircraft,” Kurt said. “Once we have it, they’ll have no reason to be here. The danger will be gone.”

Urco took a minute to ponder Kurt’s words. Finally, he looked Kurt in the eye once again. “Nothing good happens to small people when they get in the way of the great powers. Better that this thing is found and taken away so we can continue on with our lives.”

“So you’ll help us?”

“I will. What do you need?”

“Only for you to show me where you were standing when you took the video. Once we match up the surrounding peaks with what’s on the recording, we can extrapolate the precise direction of the craft and make a good estimate of its speed and altitude. With that information, we’ll be able to find the landing site in a matter of hours and haul it away.”

“And once that’s done?” Urco asked.

“I’ll make sure it’s well known that we’ve recovered the vehicle intact,” Kurt promised. “I’ll even tell the world where we found it so that anyone who wants to look for themselves can bypass you and go straight to the crash site.”

Urco stroked his beard. “Very well,” he said. “Then I will help you gladly. But first… we eat.”