He walked over to the edge of the wall and stared down. The fortification was undamaged. Time had taken its toll on the smooth bricks, but none of them had been broken. Only the column that held the torch directly beneath him on the ground had toppled.
It made no sense.
'This is where the invading force breached their fortifications,' he said, thinking aloud. Jay raised the camera toward him, but he pushed the lens away. 'They took their stand right here, where these men fell, and there was no one left to claim their bodies. But they were so savagely attacked...I mean, their skulls were shattered and they were torn limb from limb.'
He turned to face Galen, whose face had gone ashen.
'And the other bodies we found on the path leading here,' Sam said, 'they were all pointing in the opposite direction as though they'd been overcome as they ran.'
'Like the jaguar,' Galen whispered.
'They were falling back to that chamber where you discovered the boiled bones,' Merritt said.
Silence hung over the clearing, marred only by the rumble of the waterfall and the whistle of the wind along the wall.
'What in the name of God happened here?' Sam whispered. The spark of excitement faded from her eyes.
'I think...' Galen started, but said no more. He closed his mouth, shook his head, and glanced at Merritt from the corner of his eye.
'What?' Sam asked.
Galen looked again at Merritt, then sighed. 'Nothing.'
He turned away from them and struck off on the trail. After several steps, he paused, plucked a long brown feather from a snarl of ferns, and hurried back in the direction from which they had come.
VII
'John Kaleleiki,' Leo said.
'How can you be sure?' Colton asked. He relieved Leo of the penlight and crouched to scrutinize what was left of the man.
'The Hawaiian-print shirts were his trademark. In the five years I knew him, I never saw him wear anything else.' Leo's voice fell to a whisper. 'He was one of the country's most respected geological engineers and a master of the martial art form Lua. And they tore him apart like tissue paper. There isn't even any blood on his machete.'
Colton had noticed the same thing. Based on the patterns of spatter on the ceiling and walls, whatever killed him had attacked simultaneously from the front and the rear. The man had never stood a chance.
He raised the light from the bones and directed it deeper into the darkness.
'We need to tell the others,' Leo whispered. 'And we should seriously consider a plan for evacuation.'
'Not until we have something concrete.' Colton eased past Leo, careful not to step on Kaleleiki's carcass. The tacky blood made a crackling sound as it peeled away from the ground on the tread of his boots.
'Concrete? Tell me John wasn't killed in the exact same manner as Rippeth.' He swatted the flies from his face and followed Colton. 'How much more concrete can it get? There's something here in the jungle with us, something capable of slaughtering every single one of us.'
'But they haven't attacked yet, have they? Let's evaluate what we know so far. This man was obviously alone when he was attacked. Rippeth had been alone as well. The rest of us haven't seen anything, have we? Safety appears to be in numbers. As long as we stay together, I don't believe they currently pose much of a threat.'
'And what about Dr. Russell's theory regarding what might be out there?'
'He was no proof.'
'I think what's left of John Kaleleiki would probably qualify.'
Colton rounded on Leo and spoke slowly through bared teeth, making no attempt to hide his rising anger.
'You placed me in charge of this expedition because I am the very best at what I do. Do you really think panicking the others is the right decision? Next thing you know, they'll all be fleeing through the jungle, screaming the whole way. And if my assessment is correct, that's a guaranteed death sentence. What we need to do first is to gain a functional understanding of our adversary---how it thinks, how it functions, what triggers it to attack---and from there we need to plot a course of action. Only then, when everything is in place, can we make the others aware of the threat, once we're confident that we'll be able to guarantee their safety.'
'And in the meantime?'
'The less anyone suspects, the better. For now, we need to determine exactly what happened here, and how to prevent it from happening again. And unless I'm mistaken, somewhere down the shaft ahead of us is the deposit of gold we came here to find.'
'I don't give a rat's ass about the gold anymore,' Leo whispered.
'Then it's a good thing you're paying me to be in charge,' Colton said. 'Because I do.'
At the sound of approaching footsteps, Colton turned and shined the beam past what was left of John Kaleleiki. Sorenson raised a hand to keep the light out of his eyes. Behind the massive blonde man, Morton and Webber stepped into the weak glow. Black flies swarmed around them, but they appeared oblivious as their attention fell to the ground at their feet. The color drained from the normally red-faced Scandinavian's cheeks. He raised his piercing blue eyes to meet Colton's stare.
'Keep the others out of this tunnel,' Colton said. 'And see what you can do about this mess.'
Sorenson looked down at the carnage, then back up at Colton. His features again became unreadable.
'I trust you have no objection to renegotiating our salaries,' Sorenson said.
Colton turned to Leo and raised an eyebrow.
'Whatever,' Leo said. 'Anything you want.'
'And as far as the contents of the crate...?' Sorenson asked.
'Equip yourselves however you see fit,' Colton said, 'but I don't want the others to sense that anything is amiss until we can rationalize what we're dealing with here. Understand?'
Sorenson gave a curt nod, then turned to the other men. After a brief whispered conversation, Morton and Webber headed back toward the mouth of the shaft and vanished into the darkness, leaving Sorenson to handle the untidy details.
Colton whirled and struck off deeper into the mountain. A faint aura of light bloomed behind him and he heard a chiseling sound as Sorenson set to work. The noise faded as he and Leo advanced. They now had to be close to three hundred yards into the rock crevice, and still bones filled the recesses in the ossuary walls. How many bodies had been interred here?
The ground became more coarse and uneven, and began to slope downward, imperceptibly at first, but then steeper and steeper until they descended a series of rock ledges into a large cavern. The flashlight was just strong enough to illuminate the tips of the stalactites above them. The remainder of their conical forms was shrouded in a palpable darkness that rustled restlessly. An occasional leather-winged inhabitant slashed through the shadows before disappearing once more. The walls weren't smooth, and instead showcased deep gouges and rough chisel marks, from which quartz glimmered in reflection like tiny eyes. Crumbled granite lined the base of the walls.
The air was murky with dust, through which the occasional fly circled, only to be snared by one of the dark bodies that dove from the cavern roof and vanished again as though it had never been. Based on the smell, the bats were definitely earning their keep. There was only a dull buzzing from the center of the chamber, where the thin beam highlighted first a boot, then the stump of the leg to which it had once been attached. The nubs and knots of severed tendons curled away from the bloodstained bones. All of the muscle and flesh had been stripped away, leaving a bare pelvis wearing the remnants of a black leather belt. Flies crawled on the slightly concave bones, dipping their feet in the sticky crust of bodily dissolution. There were tatters of fabric everywhere, all saturated to a deep black with blood. The ribcage was shattered, the spine acutely broken. Neither of the arms were anywhere
