Operation: Amazon

- 20 -

The top run of steps down the passage at the rear of the altar room were still slippery with oil, but the rest of the descent went without a hitch. They wound their way down, firstly to the cells where they’d been held earlier, then descended in the dim winding stairwell. Now that it was daylight outside, they had enough light coming in the slits of the windows to show them the steps ahead. They didn’t meet any resistance all the way to the foot of the stairs and arrived in the cavern minutes later.

The first thing that Banks noticed was that there was no body on the floor in the doorway. The dead man was gone.

“I ken he didn’t get up and walk,” Wiggins said. “You cut his chest and belly to ribbons then burned his insides out. So where did the buggering thing go?”

“Eaten, is my guess,” Buller said. “Eaten by his pals. They’re fucking big snakes. It’s what fucking big snakes do.”

It wasn’t the floor where Buller had his attention focused, but on the ceiling and walls of the cavern. Now, with more light available and daylight streaming in the doorway, the extent of the seam was even more impressive. The wide band ran, six feet thick in places, fully across the whole extent of the chamber.

“I’m going to be as rich as fucking Croesus. This could go all the way up through the hill,” Buller said in whispered awe. “It’s probably why they built the temple here in the first place.”

“I doubt that,” Banks said in reply. “You saw the rooms up on the causeway. They didn’t worship the gold; they treated it as something to use in building work, a canvas for their stories.”

“It must be the gold. Why else would they put such a bloody huge temple in the middle of the Amazonian jungle?”

“You said it yourself,” Banks said. “Some kind of snake worship. Magic, I believe was the word you used? There’s something else here we haven’t got to the bottom of yet.”

Buller wasn’t paying attention. He was already walking away across the cavern, charting the course of the gold seam with a raised hand. Banks left him to it and went to the doorway before tapping at his ear again.

“Banks checking in,” he said. The Brazilian captain came back loud and clear in his ear.

“Glad to hear you safe and sound,” the pilot said. “Nothing to report up here; all quiet on the causeway.”

“Let’s hope it stays that way. We’ll be with you in 10 minutes. I want to check this outer track here. If we make it back okay, then you can go ahead and call in that medical team. Looks like the site is secure.”

“What about the fucking huge snakes, Cap?” Wiggins said when Banks stepped back into the cavern.

“If the theory is right, and they’re all infected people, then we’ve got them trapped down there in the dark under the pyramid. If any others turn up, you have my permission to shoot the fuck out of them. I’ve had about enough sneaking about in this place to do me for a while. Let’s do a reccy up the hill, then we can leave this wanker with his gold and get the fuck off this hill. Whatever happens next is his problem, not ours.”

“We need to get more people out here,” Buller said. “Geologists, engineers…”

“Doctors first, for those poor bastards we left down in the dark,” Hynd said.

“I told you, they can’t be helped.”

Wiggins stood up close to Buller again.

“And I told you to shut the fuck up. They’ll be helped. You might be a murdering fuckwit, but that’s not how we do things in this squad.”

Buller’s mouth looked like it wanted to work, but Wiggins shook a finger in the man’s face.

“Nope. Just nope. Keep it zipped. One more word out of you and I really will put a bullet in you. That’s a promise, from one Scots bastard to another.”

The squad, with a silent Buller in the middle, moved out a minute later onto the track that wound around the hill. They’d headed down to the river the last time but now Banks led them upward, toward the ridge they could see up a steep slope ahead of them.

The track was so narrow they had to climb single file, and it was precipitous in the extreme in places, with a sheer drop to their right, 100 feet and more to the canopy of the rainforest below. Banks led, searching the ground ahead for tracks or any sign that someone might have recently passed this way. He was so intent that he almost didn’t notice when a sprinkle of dry earth fell on him from higher up. He reacted immediately, instinct kicking in, and looked up, his weapon already aimed along his line of sight. There was no target, only more dirt, now accompanied by pebbles and increasingly larger stones. The track underfoot trembled and bucked, threatening to throw them all down the cliff face.

“Earthquake!” he shouted, then had no time for words as the path lifted several inches and then fell back, leaving a sick emptiness in Banks’ stomach and a split second sensation of falling, then relief when his feet planted on solid — or nearly so — ground. He turned his head, and saw the squad hugging the rock face. Buller had almost taken the tumble off the edge, and Wiggins had him by an arm, pulling him back up onto the track to where he could at least get onto his hands and knees.

The tremor stopped as quickly as it started. Some more fine dirt fell in their hair, then everything went silent save for some surprised parakeets that circled overhead, squawked loudly for a few seconds then dropped to settle in their roosts, hidden in the canopy. Buller looked white-faced and wide-eyed, and trembled so badly he might have been in the throes of a fit.

“If you’re going to spew, don’t do it on my boots,” Wiggins said.

Buller got carefully to his feet.

“Thanks,” he said, but didn’t look Wiggins in the eye.

“Don’t mention it. Really, don’t mention it.”

Banks’ headset crackled and the pilot’s voice came over the com.

“Still there, Captain?”

“Aye, just about,” Banks replied. “All okay up there?”

“We were in a clear enough spot to be away from any trouble,” he replied. “Just as well you got out of the pyramid though. It looks like it has caved in at the top level.”

Banks had the sinking feeling in his gut again, but it wasn’t the earthquake that did it this time.

“Take off,” he said. “No questions, get in the air right now. And keep an eye on the pyramid. You might have an attack incoming.”