The Lost City

CHAPTER THIRTY

Hawke looked up and saw she was right. The rigging that was slowly making its way toward them was some kind of bronze framework with at least two dozen razor-sharp spikes on it. Long vines hung down like tentacles and made it look even grimmer. “This is not good,” he said.

Lea searched the antechamber for anything that might indicate a way out as the rigging above their heads slowly worked its way toward them. The grinding sound of the grille as it scraped against the cooled lava was ear-piercing, and with every second the sharpened bronze spikes grew ever-closer to their heads. “Maybe we can use the vines to escape?” she said.

The liana vines covering the spike-frame were now low enough to be dangling over them. The liana was a type of woody vine that thrived in the canopies of the Amazon rainforest and some could grow over three thousand feet long. These ones had grown in through cracks in the roof the chamber.

“Possible,” Ryan said glumly. “It’s where they get rattan for rope and stuff.”

“Well it’s gross,” Lea said, pulling some away from her shoulder.

“Don’t worry about it,” Hawke said, helping to pull the liana away from her.

Another vine slid over her back and she screamed.

“Just calm down,” Hawke said.

“I am being calm, Josiah…”

“If this is your idea of calm I’d hate to see how you react when something serious happens, like burning the toast.”

“Stop being a smartarse and just get the thing off me. It’s… gross.”

“Hey!” Ryan said. “I think I found something — look.”

They joined him by the door they had used on their way into the volcano. He was studying a stone panel in the floor, positioned like a doormat and covered in strange lines.

“What is it, mate?”

“Some kind of Inca puzzle, I think. I’m not sure.” He got down on his knees and blew the dust and dirt out of the cracks in the puzzle stone.

“Time to get sure, Ry,” Lea said casting a panicked glare upwards. “Can’t be more than a couple of minutes till that thing’s turning us all into kebabs.”

“I’m going as fast as I can,” he said. “These are not easy to read. They’re very badly deteriorated for one thing, and the meanings seem to be obscured… almost cryptic.”

“That’s great, Ryan,” Lexi said, joining Lea now and staring up at the descending framework of razor-sharp spikes. “But in about ninety seconds we’re going to be pinned to the dirt like butterflies on a piece of card.”

“I believe,” Ryan said, turning to face her. “That the term you’re searching for is mounting board.”

“Yes, I believe it may be,” Lexi said. “Oh and by the way — why are you looking at me and not the symbols?”

“She has a point, mate.”

Ryan conceded the matter and returned to the symbols. “I’ve been looking at these all wrong. This isn’t a series of degraded symbols at all — this is a depiction of a yupana.”

“And that’s what?”

“It’s basically an Incan abacus.”

“Oh, crap,” Scarlet said. “A maths problem.”

Ryan turned to her, his face more weary now, but the faintest glimmer of the man he used to be still in his eyes. “Thank God I’m here then, eh?”

“Yes,” she said, crossing her arms. “Quite.”

“So let me get on with it, then.”

Lea felt the frustration grow in her heart. They had already lost Professor Balta and Luis, and now things were looking perilous for the rest of the team as well. Not only that, but Ziad Saqqal, Jawad, Rajavi, Corzo and Dirk Kruger were all getting away with the Lost Treasure of the Incas piled into their choppers. If that weren’t bad enough, they also had of the most lethal forms of pneumatic plague ever to strike mankind.

Reaper stared up at the grid, shook his head and let out a long, low sigh. It was low enough for him to reach now, and he grabbed hold of one of the spikes to test its strength. “Definitely bronze,” he said, trying hard to shift it. “And connected very strongly to the grille framework. We’re not snapping these things off.”

“More good news,” Scarlet said.

The grinding sound was louder now as the framework was working its way much closer, and they were all crouching to avoid the spikes pushing down onto their heads and shoulders.

“I’ve got it,” Ryan said. “It’s actually a rather complex mathematics puzzle — much more complex that I would have thought them capable of.”

“Ryan… four inches…”

“He knows all about four inches,” Scarlet said, nudging the young man in the ribs. “Eh, boy?”

Ryan ignored it. “It’s similar to Ribet’s Theorem.”

Lea stared at him. “What now?”

“Three inches…”

“It’s a number theory statement to do with the properties of Galois representations that are associated with modular forms.”

Lexi looked at him. “Ryan, are you having a breakdown?”

“When the epsilon conjecture was finally proven it led the way to Fermat’s Last Theorem being cracked.”

Hawke scratched his head and looked from the spikes to Ryan’s young face. “Mate, when you said it was a maths problem I thought you meant like adding up.”

“Yeah… not so much.”

“Two inches.”

“Ryan definitely knows about all about two inches,” Scarlet said.

Lea sighed. “It didn’t work and wasn’t funny at four inches, so why the hell do you think it would work and be funny two inches later?”

“Give me a break, I’m under pressure!”

On their knees now, the spikes were only inches away from them, and there was nowhere else to run or hide. “Can’t be more than thirty seconds before we’re all skewered,” Lexi said. “Not how I thought I was going to go out.”

“And how did you think you were going to go out?” Hawke asked.

She shrugged. I don’t know… maybe in battle, or in the basement of the Ministry under heavy interrogation. What about you?”

“Me?” Hawke said. “Not the sort of thing I think about.”

“And you?” Lexi asked Scarlet.

“Oh, no idea. Maybe massaged to death on a tropical beach with a banana daiquiri in each hand.”

Lea rolled her eyes. “Yes, how very you.”

“Thanks, darling.”

“It wasn’t a compliment, and ouch! Blood hell, Ryan — hurry up! These sodding spikes are starting to push into my shoulders!”

“I’m going as fast as I can, Lea.”

“So how about you?” Lexi asked Lea.

“Me? I don’t know. Not as a freaking kebab to be discovered in another two hundred years by another idiot searching for gold plates, that’s for damned sure!”

With seconds to spare, Ryan arranged the tiles and the frame stopped descending. A few seconds later the door opened, but the one behind, blocking the Amazonian warriors, stayed shut.

“Thanks buggery for that,” Scarlet said, rubbing her shoulder. “It was getting rather poky in there.”

“Oh, please…” Lea said.

They raced through the lava tunnel and emerged in the outside of the volcano into the fresh air. They ran through the jumble of stone houses in the outer quarter until they got back to the clearing beyond the town.

Just as they had predicted, there was no sign of Kruger, Saqqal or the chopper outside the volcano. They had cleared out with all of the treasure and the dead bodies of both the rebels were lying around the area where they had taken off.

“Why did he kill his own men?” Ryan asked.

“To make room for the treasure,” Hawke said with disgust, and then sighed as he turned his face toward the trees to the south where he had landed. Smoke was billowing up into the tropical sky. “Looks like they blew up our choppers as well.”

They all turned to face the scene of destruction in the distant jungle and walked slowly along the path they had hiked on their way to the volcano just hours ago. When they reached the clearing they saw Hawke had been right in his guess — both the Bell 47 and the Mi-171 were now just smouldering wreckage, courtesy of Rajavi’s grenade launcher.

Hawke clenched his jaw with anger as he thought about Kruger and Saqqal laughing as their helicopters exploded, while they were fighting for their lives back in the spike trap. “These bastards are really beginning to get on my nerves,” he said through gritted teeth.

“We’ll get him, don’t worry about that,” Scarlet said coolly. “I always get my man.”

“And everyone else’s,” Lexi said with a sideways glance.

“Oh, that’s rich coming from you,” Scarlet said, fronting up to her.

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

“Pack it in,” Hawke said.

“So what now?” Lea asked.

“Now we wait for Lund to send back up,” Reaper said.

Hawke nodded. “Thank God we told him the coordinates…”

Lea turned to him. “You think we can trust him?”

He shrugged he shoulders. “I hope so, because if we can’t, it’s a twenty day hike in that direction.” He pointed through a cloud of mosquitoes at the jungle beyond the clearing.