glanced at his watch. Only four hours before the Lynx was due to pick them up from Rajahmundry and take them back to Seaquest II.
Costas glanced into the darkness of the jungle, then pointed at the pendant around Pradesh’s neck. “I was wondering,” he said. “Got any more of those tiger claws?”
Pradesh glanced at him, and began heaving at the boat. “You don’t need one, remember? You’ve eaten tiger food. But don’t worry. I won’t walk you into a fire-fight. If there’s any sign of trouble, my two sappers will shoot to kill.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Costas said. “Jack?”
“Let’s do it.”
11
Look below us now. Quick, before they vanish. In the jungle.”
Jack peered out of the open side door of the helicopter, feeling the downdraft of the rotor against his helmet. Costas did the same on the other side. At first they saw nothing but the lushness of the jungle, draped over the rugged contours of the hills like a thick pile carpet. Then Jack realized there was movement in the gloom below the canopy, a ripple like a spreading shadow, as if the Godavari River behind them had burst its banks and was tumbling through the ravines and gullies of the jungle. He saw individual black shapes in the lead, pounding through the jungle clearings. He heard nothing except the helicopter, but he sensed a rumble like thunder, the sound of a herd of bison as they rolled through the jungle toward some unknown destination.
“They’re gaur,” Pradesh said through the intercom from the co-pilot’s seat. “The Koya fear them almost as much as the tigers. With a herd this size around, that’s another reason for avoiding the jungle path and taking the helicopter.”
Jack leaned back inside. He and Costas were strapped into the door seats facing aft, and Jack held on to the mounting where the door gun would once have been. The helicopter was an old Huey, ex-Indian army but now used as a workhorse for supplying remote villages in the jungles of the Eastern Ghats. It had been out of the question for Pradesh to request a helicopter from his own unit, with markings that would have alarmed the Koya and the Maoist terrorists, and the IMU Lynx looked too much like one of the machines that brought in the mining prospectors. But Jack felt they were adequately protected for the mission at hand, a quick foray that Pradesh hoped would take them less than two hours, so they could be out before sunset. On the fold-down seats opposite were two of Pradesh’s sappers, cheerful men from the Madras Engineering Group Assault Company. Each had a weapons case strapped down on the floor in front of them. Jack looked at their faces, at the moustaches and fierce eyes, and wondered if they too had ancestors who had been up here before, men who might have been with his own great-great- grandfather on the jungle path below them on that fateful day in 1879.
“We’re only ten minutes away now,” Pradesh said. “The clearing with the shrine is ahead of us, and the village of Rampa is about a kilometer to the east, where you can see the smoke rising above the jungle.” The two sappers quickly opened their weapon cases, taking out AK-74 assault rifles and pushing in the banana-shaped magazines. They cocked the rifles and held them on their knees, muzzles facing outward. One of them motioned for Jack and Costas to slide their seats along the floor runnels toward the center of the cabin, away from the open doors. Pradesh leaned around, checking that they had moved. “Just in case we encounter any incoming rounds,” he said. “According to the Koya we just spoke to, the clearing hasn’t been used as a regular camp by the Maoists for some time now, but the Koya have been too fearful to go there themselves. They said the Rampa villagers heard a lot of shooting on the day the Chinese mining prospectors went there. There’s no telling what we’ll find.”
“So what’s with Rampa village, the name?” Costas said.
“It’s derived from Rama, the prince who became a focus for Hindu worship,” Pradesh replied. “According to the Ramayana, the ancient Sanskrit epic, Prince Rama traveled south from Oudh and spent ten years in exile in the jungle. The place we’re going to, the shrine, has always been known as the temple of Rama.”
Jack pressed the intercom on his helmet. “I’ve been thinking about that since we saw that Roman coin from the velpu. When the Romans were at Arikamedu, the most common local name for them was yavanas, westerners. But the name raumanas also crops up in Brahmin literature. It may just be coincidence.”
“Come on, Jack,” Costas said. “When have you ever believed in coincidences?”
“It’s a fascinating possibility,” Pradesh said. “As a Hindu, I took the Ramayana at face value. That seemed to account for it. But I know from my Koya ancestry that a shrine to Rama is completely at odds with jungle beliefs. They have no shrines to their gods, no holy sanctums, not even sacred colors. Their gods are all around them, pure immanence. As Hindus we accept stories of interlopers, as our religion is all-encompassing. But for the animist beliefs of the Koya, it’s a different story. If it wasn’t Prince Rama himself, it must have been an equally powerful presence who came here and left a mark.”
“Maybe another interloper,” Costas said.
“Okay. Here we are now.” The helicopter slowed down, angled slightly to port and began to fly a wide circle around a misty patch in the jungle. Jack could see where they had flown up over a ravine, the rugged jungle flank rising up on either side over patches of dull red where the mud must have slipped during the monsoon. Through the dense foliage he could make out the flow of the stream that had carved the ravine, among jumbled masses of boulders exposed in the bed. It was the only obvious route up from the river fifteen kilometers to the south-west, and it must have been where Howard and Wauchope came with their sappers in 1879. They would have been completely exposed to fire from above, and it was hard to see how they were not cut down by the rebels. But Jack remembered Pradesh’s story of the bamboo velpu, Howard’s promise to the muttadar. It was the only explanation for how they could have got through unscathed.
The downdraft from the rotor cleared a swathe through the air, and Jack could see where the stream skirted the east side of the clearing after disgorging from another tumble of boulders that had rolled down from the jungle flank beyond. He could see the trickling waterfall where the boulders extended out into the clearing. In front were three slabs of enormous size, one of them resting on the other two like a gigantic prehistoric lintel.
“That’s the shrine,” Pradesh said, pointing. “The entrance is under the lintel at the front, but it was sealed off by the earthquake after the two British officers came here, the day the most sacred velpu disappeared forever. My grandfather said the earthquake was retribution from the konda devata, the tiger spirit. The Koya were already terrified of this place-tigers come here to drink from the stream at night. After the earthquake, hardly any Koya ever came here again, even into the clearing.”
“So how do we get inside?” Costas said.
“My grandfather said there was another entrance through the waterfall at the back. But you have to be very small, lithe. He said he had once done it as a boy, and seen terrifying demons inside. The Koya elders in Rampa village told the same story to their children. We sneaked up here at night, but the story of demons kept us all from trying to get inside.”
“Waterfall archaeology,” Costas said. “That’s a new one on me.”
Pradesh dangled a cord behind his seat. “There is another way.”
Costas twisted around to look, his eyes suddenly gleaming. “Detonator cord! Now that’s my kind of archaeology.”
The pilot came over the center of the clearing, pointing the nose of the helicopter toward the boulders some fifty meters away. He leveled out and began to descend. The rotor had cleared away the mist below them but now kicked up a swirl of dust and leaves. Jack leaned toward the doorway to peer out. Suddenly there was a massive clang and the helicopter lurched sideways, the edge of the door nearly hitting Jack’s face. There were more clangs and the crack of gunfire, a jolting noise even through the headphones. The air was split by a series of violent snaps as bullets whizzed through the open doors of the helicopter, missing them by inches. Jack instinctively put his left arm out to keep Costas down. The pilot pulled up on the collective and the helicopter lurched up and away. Jack glimpsed figures below, three of them, in combat fatigues and red bandanas. The pilot leveled out again and the two sappers knelt beside the open door and shouldered their rifles. They opened fire on full automatic, pouring rounds down on their assailants. They stopped, looked out for a second, then fired three rounds each, aiming carefully this time. They snapped off their magazines and quickly reloaded. Jack saw the three figures lying sprawled in the dust, surrounded by dark red stains expanding into a puddle on the clearing floor.
