miss.
TWENTY-NINE
By the time the C-17 reached Easter Island, it was dusk. Despite Jess and Fay’s eagerness to get started, Tyler convinced them that the trek to the location on the map would have to wait until morning.
He had spent most of his waking time on the flight planning the security arrangements with the NSA operatives and the pilots, who never questioned the diversion from their planned paratrooper training op in Japan. In between catnaps Fay and Jess researched Rapa Nui history using a dozen books and articles they’d downloaded during the stopover in Sydney.
On arrival they quickly determined that there was no way Colchev had beaten them to the island. The tarmac of diminutive Mataveri Airport, the most remote commercial airport in the world, was devoid of aircraft. There were only a few scheduled flights per day, most of them from Santiago and Lima. Colchev couldn’t have made it all the way to South America and caught a flight to Easter Island in that time, and the airliner from Tahiti wasn’t scheduled to arrive for two more days. The only other way to the island was by private jet, and according to ground control, none had landed in weeks.
Still, because they believed Colchev had heard Fay’s Russian phrase, Tyler assumed he’d come to Easter Island eventually. Two of the NSA operatives would stay behind with the three C-17 crew members to keep an eye out for him while the other two would accompany Tyler, Jess, and Fay in their search of the island. Formed by an extinct volcano, Easter Island measured only fifteen miles across at its widest point, and the airport was not much more than a two-mile-long landing strip next to Hanga Roa, the town where virtually all of the five thousand inhabitants lived.
The Air Force and NSA men opted to stay with the plane for the night and take shifts sleeping on the crew bunks inside. When he was in his twenties, Tyler would have thought nothing of stretching out on the plane’s spartan accommodations, but now that he was in his thirties, he’d gotten used to a bit more comfort. Besides, Fay and Jess wanted to stay at a hotel, so they found two rooms at the Tupa Hotel near the main street.
After settling in, Tyler suggested that the three of them get some dinner, but Fay, who had snacked on the plane, said she was too tired for dinner and retired early. That left Tyler and Jess to find a restaurant by themselves, alone together for the first time since New Zealand.
They chose a place called Au Bout du Monde that was popular with tourists who came to gawk at the island’s incredible Moai statues. It was winter on the subtropical island, so half the tables were empty.
Tyler and Jess were seated on a second-story patio warmed by heat lamps to fend off the evening chill. The position gave them a dazzling view of the moonlit Pacific. The expansive sea suggested just how isolated they were on the tiny island. Beyond the distant horizon, the ocean was uninterrupted by land for another 1,200 miles.
As they waited for their green curry appetizers and pisco sours made with Rapa Nui’s native grape hard alcohol and lemons, they quietly took in the scenery, avoiding eye contact as much as possible. Once the food and drinks arrived, Tyler filled the awkward silence by asking Jess about her research during the flight.
“Did you and Fay figure out exactly where the map is taking us tomorrow?”
“We think so,” Jess said. “The map shows a jagged line going from the center of the island to the point on the coast where we’re supposed to find whatever it is we’re looking for. Comparing it to the satellite photo of Rapa Nui, we narrowed it down to a dry creek just south of the Ahu Maitake Te Moa.”
“What are we looking for? One of Easter Island’s famous statues?”
Tyler had seen photos of the stoic monoliths, some with the creepy white eyes still in place, but he didn’t know much about them other than their general appearance and massive size, some of them weighing in at more than eighty tons.
“I doubt what we’re looking for is one of the Moai,” she said.
“Why not?”
“From what I read on the plane, it seems clear that all eight hundred and eighty-seven of them have been well studied and documented. They’re either located on Ahu — those are the ceremonial stone platforms — or they are still lying in the quarries where they were carved.”
“How do you think they are related to Roswell and Nazca?” he asked.
“I don’t know the link to Roswell, but a connection to the Nazca is a possibility. Nana is a much better authority on Nazca than I ever will be, but my understanding is that there was an exodus from the Nazca plain of Peru sometime between AD five hundred and seven hundred. No one knows for sure why they left or where they went, but some anthropologists think South American migrants settled this region of Polynesia around that time. The Nazca people could have been among them. Thor Hyerdahl proved that it was possible by building a raft called
“Could the Moai have been created by the same people who drew the Nazca lines?”
“Supposedly the Moai came hundreds of years later, but who knows? Maybe the statues were created by their descendants. The height of their construction was in the 1600s until it came to an abrupt halt and the island’s population crashed.”
Tyler nodded. “I remember there was a book called
“Right. Jared Diamond popularized that theory.”
“Theory? Looks like a slam dunk. I didn’t see more than a couple of trees when we were coming in for a landing.”
“They’ve replanted some trees in the center of the island, but it’s still mostly barren grassland. They could have used trees to move the statues, but that’s just one theory.”
“Really? I thought it was pretty well established the islanders transported the Moai on rolling logs.”
“There have been arguments about that for decades. Another theory is that they may have been moved by human sweat alone by dragging the statues with ropes made from the trees.”
Tyler chuckled. “Come on. Dragging rocks weighing over a hundred thousand pounds?”
Jess smiled. “Which is why some of the more out-there ideas include alien intervention and tractor beams.”
Tyler grinned at that. “There we go with the aliens again. Fay sure seems convinced that we’re dealing with spacemen.”
“She’s got me doubting myself. What about you?”
“I’m a skeptic, but I’m also open-minded. However, I’d like some more evidence before I conclude that the Nazca lines and the Moai were created by beings from outer space.”
“Right now, theories are all we have to go on. Another bizarre hypothesis for how the statues were moved comes from an old woman who told the first European explorers that the Moai walked to their current positions.”
“Now you’re just trying to make the aliens seem reasonable.”
“No, really. A man named Pavel Pavel tied ropes to one of the smaller twelve-ton Moai and by rocking it back and forth, he and a crew of seventeen men were able to move it, covering ground at a rate of six hundred and fifty feet per day.”
“Sounds possible if the base were shaped correctly and the statue had an optimal center of gravity — not so low that it would be hard to rock, but not so high that it would topple easily.”
“The problem was that it chipped the base, and none of the Moai show that kind of damage.”
Tyler scooped up the last of the curry. “The Moai were moved from quarries. Do you think the wood engraving is leading us to something like that?”
“It’s possible, but Nana had an alternative theory. The map is steering us toward the northwestern edge of the island. Rapa Nui’s ocean-side cliffs are riddled with caves that were painted by the natives. Her guess is that we’ll find one at that location.”
Tyler groaned. “More caves?”
