Ramsey's Gold

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Spencer patted Drake’s backpack, the tents rolled up and stowed along with the rest of their gear, and with a final look around the tranquil waterfall area, peered into the surrounding jungle. The early morning sun was just beginning to climb high enough to afford light.

“Lead on, Bwana,” he said.

Drake nodded as he slipped his AK-47’s strap over his shoulder and drew his machete. “It’s about three hard hours away.”

“You sure you can find it again?” Allie asked, approaching from the pool at the base of the waterfall, looking radiant in spite of having been in the rainforest for weeks.

“You bet. I’m really getting the hang of this whole jungle-adventurer thing.”

“That’s good, because it looks like it’s going to start raining again soon,” Spencer said, eyeing the thunderheads parading across the sky.

“Wouldn’t be the rainforest if it didn’t rain, would it?” Drake quipped, making for the faint game trail he’d used the day before.

The clouds erupted with a shattering roar an hour later, and the tepid rain poured down on them as they slogged through the dense foliage, this time with Drake in the lead and Spencer bringing up the rear. The journey took longer than Drake had promised due to the difficult conditions, but by eleven they were standing at the base of an even larger waterfall as the last of the rainstorm spent itself around them. Drake pointed at the river, perhaps thirty feet wide, its brown water swirling with a strong current, and turned to Allie.

“Thar she blows. We follow that, and when we hit a smaller river branching off to the left, that’s our path to Paititi.”

Allie nodded as Spencer removed his backpack and set his rifle against it.

“Let’s take fifteen, refill our canteens, and then get on with it. I’d like to be near the city by the time the heat really gets ugly.”

“Which it will, as always,” Drake agreed.

“How sure are you that it’s only a few more miles?”

“That’s an approximation. I’m assuming that the map the daughter drew was close to scale, but there are no guarantees. However, based on the distance between the two waterfalls, we’re in the ballpark.”

The riverbank was slippery from the rain, but they found a game track that ran roughly parallel, so they were able to set a reasonable pace. Two hours later they came to the branch in the river, and Drake’s pulse quickened as their destination seemed as close as around the next bend. He mopped sweat from his face as he considered the smaller tributary, and after another break, they set off, the heat now oppressive as any cooling effect brought by the rain evaporated with the drying droplets trembling on the leaves around them.

A little over a mile farther, Drake stopped, extending his arm so Allie wouldn’t walk past him. He felt her move closer and signaled for her to remain quiet, and then pointed to a spot a few yards ahead of him. A pile of human bones rested beside a thicket, skulls grinning from between the vines, sightless eye sockets dark in the bushes. Allie gasped and grabbed Drake’s shoulder, and stabbed a trembling finger at another skull impaled on a crude pole to the side of the trail.

Spencer took the lead. They set off, now moving considerably more slowly, clutching their weapons, the sense of menace palpable as they moved cautiously forward. A hundred yards farther they came to another skull, this one with a large crack running along the top and the front teeth almost all rotted out. Spencer chambered a round as they walked by, and a bird flapped away in the overhead canopy, the unfamiliar sound of the rifle loading startling it into flight. A troop of monkeys leapt from branch to branch near a break in the trees by the river, their grunts and cries echoing in the forest. Drake checked to ensure his weapon was also loaded and ready for use.

A quarter mile along the bank, Spencer stopped and pointed into the jungle at what appeared to be ruins, much like those they’d found at the outpost — but far more of the mounds, invisible from the river, the rainforest hiding the remains, having long ago reclaimed them. Spencer motioned for them to stay quiet; and then, from the direction of the ruins, they heard voices.

They froze as the sound of soft male voices drifted nearer, though the exact spot they were coming from was impossible to pinpoint. Drake slowed his breathing and crouched low in the brush, hoping that any snakes were taking the afternoon off. Allie gave him a scared glance, and then the voices were moving away, deeper into the jungle. They waited motionless for a few minutes, not daring to tempt fate. Spencer eventually crept back to their position and whispered to them.

“We’ve got company.”

“What do you think? Traffickers?” Allie asked.

Spencer shook his head. “No. Too quiet. My guess is natives. But you can see why Drake’s tribe would view the area as off-limits. Those skeletons aren’t just for display — they came from somewhere, most likely from other natives who stumbled across the city.”

“So what do we do?” Drake asked.

“Try to avoid getting killed while we see what we’re up against.”

Spencer stopped talking, his head tilted at an angle, listening. A faint thumping sounded in the distance, rhythmic, its beat echoing off the trees. Spencer began moving toward the sound in a low crouch, his rifle in front of him, pushing the bushes aside. Allie and Drake followed him, the wet leaves beneath their feet absorbing any noise from their boots as they edged along another trail, this one more defined. Drake saw footprints in the wet mud — bare feet — which confirmed Spencer’s guess that the voices belonged to tribesmen.

They approached a particularly dense thicket, and the drumbeat seemed only a stone’s throw away. Spencer slowed and eased a branch aside to peer into an open area beyond. Drake edged alongside him and did the same, Allie right behind them, and froze at the spectacle that greeted his eyes.

Two dozen dark-skinned men with their faces painted like skulls waited with spears, bows and ten-foot-long blowguns, watching a stone podium where a figure straight out of hell stood gazing at the drummer, who was beating on a hollow log. The figure was naked, as were the tribesman, but white as a ghost, his hair matted with pale mud that coated his entire body. Streaks of black darkened his eyes, giving his face a cadaverous look. Drake’s skin crawled instinctively at the apparition.

Then the figure moved, and Drake could see it was in actuality an old man, his body thin and frail, the mud lending him an even more skeletal aura. The man barked something unintelligible, and the drummer stopped, waiting.

From the edge of the clearing another tribesman entered, dragging a small figure. Drake saw it was a boy, no more than ten years old. The boy stumbled. His ankles were bound with a leather cord, as were his wrists, and another leather tether had been wrapped across his face, blinding him and muffling any cries. His captor pulled him by the arm, and Drake could make out a wound on his abdomen, blood crusted around it. When they reached the stone podium, Drake realized with a jolt that it was an altar.

Allie inched next to him and watched in horror as the boy struggled to stand, obviously in agony, trembling and tiny as the collection of natives observed in silent witness. The white-clay-covered man leaned his head back and emitted a blood-chilling moan at the sky, only vaguely human in timbre, and then spread his arms wide, as if welcoming the boy.

What happened next caused Allie to grip Drake’s arm and press her head against his shoulder, tears streaming down her face.

The captor struck the boy in the back of the head with a heavy wooden club, and he collapsed in a heap at the man’s feet. The man knelt down, lifted the boy ceremoniously, and placed him on the stone altar.

The mud-smeared elder brandished a shining metal blade over his head — what looked like a machete ground down to a sharper point for more sinister duty than clearing brush. The captor took it from the elder and bowed, and then turned to the boy’s prone form and held the blade above it with both hands.

Drake flinched and turned away as the captor brought the knife down in a violent arc, and didn’t need to hear the murmur from the gathered men to know that the boy’s life had been brutally ended. When Drake returned his attention to the altar, blood streamed down its sides, and the men were stomping their bare feet against the ground and pounding it with their spears. The mud-caked old man did a little jig as he moved to the boy’s corpse. With a howl like a demented wolf, he plunged his hand into the new wound gashed wide by the knife, and with the boy’s blood smeared a design on his muddy white forehead.

The eerie ritual went on as the mud-smeared shaman anointed each of the gathered natives with a smudge of the crimson. When he was done, two of the tribesmen approached the altar and dragged the corpse unceremoniously into the underbrush, likely destined for one of the bone piles on the perimeter.

Spencer held his finger to his lips and pointed the way they’d come, and Drake nodded. He put his arm around Allie, whose eyes were clenched tight, and leaned into her.

“We need to get out of here,” he whispered.

He led her carefully back along the track, Spencer guarding the rear. As they arrived at the riverbank they paused, waiting for Spencer to catch up. When he joined them, he shook his head, his expression dour.

“I guess we know why your shaman’s daughter didn’t want to set foot near here,” he said.

“Pretty obvious. Is human sacrifice common with the natives in these parts?” Drake demanded.

“No. This is some kind of an abomination. Craziness.” Spencer paused. “Did you notice that the head of the party was considerably taller than the others? I made him for Caucasian. Hard to tell with all the mud, but he looked like a white man to me.”

Allie’s eyes met Drake’s. “The Inca used to perform human sacrifices. The ceremony was called capacocha. But it was nothing like what we just witnessed.”

“Really? I thought that was only the Aztecs,” Drake said.

“The Aztecs were certainly the most flamboyant, cutting hearts out. But the Incas also had their savagery. Children, often of royalty, spent a year at feasts leading up to their sacrifice, stoned out of their minds on massive amounts of cocaine. At the end of the year, they would go to the highest points in the Andes and be buried alive, left to die.” She swallowed hard. “This is nothing like what we know of those ceremonies. I agree with Spencer. This is some new ceremony that’s only slightly drawing from the capacocha tradition.”

“Could the shaman…be Palenko?” Drake asked, eyes on the jungle they’d just fled through.

“Who’s Palenko?” Spencer asked, and Drake remembered he’d never shared that part of the story with him.

Drake sat down, Allie next to him, and gave an abridged version of the Russian’s history, including the speculations about Palenko’s technology. Spencer’s eyes narrowed dangerously as he finished.

“So this is another little surprise you left out of the mix? A lunatic Russian with a doomsday weapon?” Spencer growled.

“It’s not a weapon. We actually aren’t sure what it is, other than some kind of ore.”

“Our deal was full disclosure. Now I’m facing some Russian who’s as nutty as a Christmas fruitcake, who’s set himself up a death camp with an entourage of cutthroat natives. Did I miss anything?” Spencer seethed.

“It doesn’t change much, does it? We found Paititi. Now we just need to locate the treasure.”

“Right. While we’ve got a lunatic mass murderer defending the place.”

Drake couldn’t argue with the assessment, so he didn’t try. “I didn’t say it would be easy.”

“You weren’t honest about what I got myself into.”

A crack sounded from the trees, and Spencer swung around, his weapon leveled in the direction of the commotion. A simian shape flitted among the branches, and they relaxed. When Spencer returned his focus to Drake, any trace of anger was gone.

“Whether or not their leader is this Palenko character doesn’t matter. The natives are the only thing standing between us and the city, and I didn’t come this far to turn tail and run. Frankly, I’ll feel pretty good about taking out a bunch of child killers, so I say we watch, figure out their weakness, and then exploit it.”

“That sounds fine, but how?” Allie asked.

“We’ll start with surveillance. I want to understand whether that was the whole group, or if we’ll be facing down more. The good news is that I didn’t see any guns. Although we shouldn’t underestimate the effectiveness of the blowguns. But in a straightforward assault, spears against AKs aren’t going to fare well,” Spencer said.

“It doesn’t look like they’re worried about being attacked,” Drake said.

“No, any natives in the area are probably scared out of their minds. Like your shaman was. I bet everyone gives it a wide berth. Especially if the Paititi residents are poaching for sacrifices from other tribes, which would be my guess. I have to admit, it’s an effective way to ensure nobody comes calling on your discovery.”

“It’s cold-blooded murder,” Allie said.

Another rustling came from the trail leading to the city, and Spencer turned to face the dense underbrush before whispering to Drake and Allie, “Let’s get moving. I don’t like being this close to an enemy camp with no plan.”

Drake was rising when something whizzed by his head. He wasn’t sure what it was, but Spencer didn’t hesitate. He grabbed Allie’s hand. “Run. They’re firing darts at us.”

Spencer and Allie sprinted along the water’s edge. Drake was scrambling to his feet when a dart hit his backpack with a thump and another brushed his cheek. He didn’t wait to find out whether the next volley would be better aimed, and bolted after Spencer and Allie, who were now thirty yards down the river.

Drake’s foot hit a slippery stone and he lost his footing. Tumbling sideways, he slammed against the ground. A bolt of agony shot through his ribcage as he felt something crack — he’d fallen against his elbow, breaking a rib. Drake gasped for breath and tried to get up, but the pain was momentarily blinding, each inhalation sending spikes of agony through him. He was fighting to stand when something struck his head, and everything spun and went dark.

Allie’s and Spencer’s footsteps thumped along the bank as they ran, putting as much distance between themselves and their attackers as possible. Not sensing Drake behind them, Allie slowed and looked over her shoulder. Spencer tried to pull her along, and she jerked back, hard.

“Stop. We’ve lost Drake,” she said.

Spencer slowed, rifle gripped in his right hand, and looked back over his shoulder before coming to a halt. They’d rounded a bend in the serpentine river, so they couldn’t see more than a dozen yards behind them.

“Damn.”

“We have to go back,” she insisted.

Spencer hesitated, but Allie made the decision for him when she began retracing her steps. Spencer caught up with her and grabbed her arm.

“You can’t just go charging in, or you’ll wind up dead. Do you understand? If Drake ran into trouble, getting yourself killed isn’t going to help him.”

“Fine. But we have to get him.”

Spencer grunted and nodded. “Stay behind me. Keep your finger off the trigger unless you need to shoot. Which you shouldn’t unless someone’s trying to kill you.”

“Got it.”

They crept along the riverbank, Allie six paces behind him, their senses tingling, ready for an attack that never came. When they reached the spot Drake had been sitting, there was no sign of him. Spencer scanned the jungle, the barrel of his weapon searching the undergrowth for any hint of a threat, as Allie knelt by the river.

“Spencer, this is bad,” she whispered, holding up two fingers red with blood. “They’ve got him.”

He squinted at the leaves and saw the red droplets on the dirt, already coagulating in the heat, and returned to his scrutiny of the surrounding jungle. Allie stood and he shook his head, annoyance coming through his whisper.

“Allie, just hold your horses. We need a plan. Otherwise, even with superior firepower, we could fail, and it’ll cost us our lives.”

“Then start planning. Because based on what we know, we were out of time the second they got their hands on him.”