He glanced at the fresh piles of feces. They couldn't be more than twenty-four hours old.
They needed to get out of there.
Now.
'Where are you going?' Colton snapped. 'Get back here!'
Galen didn't even pause as he ran back toward the tiny tunnel that would eventually lead him back to the outside world. He dove to his belly and wriggled through as fast as he could. His head grazed the rock above, which tilted the helmet so that the beam pointed to the side and barely illuminated his way.
It had been a mistake to come here. The biggest mistake of his life.
His panicked breathing echoed in his ears and tears streamed down his cheeks. The fabric on his knees and elbows ripped. He felt the sting of cuts and abrasions, but he didn't care. If they didn't get far away from this mountain, then that small amount of bleeding would only be the beginning.
VI
The gods were smiling on Tasker. He couldn't have asked for better luck.
A smile slashed his face as he stood at the edge of the stream, which, thanks to the ferocity of the storm, had swelled to the ranks of a full-blown river. So much water funneled down from the high country that it no longer gracefully cascaded over the edge, but fired from the top of the waterfall instead. The roar was nearly deafening. He and McMasters had barely been able to cross the strategically placed stones, which had already been claimed by the rising river. One misstep and they would have been swallowed whole and thrown into the air over the valley hundreds of feet below. Branches and debris hurtled downstream. Some lodged against the rock ledge, where they would only serve to raise the level even more, while others were launched on the flume of white spray into the nothingness over the canyon. A twenty-foot trunk sped down the rapids without encountering the slightest resistance and shot over the falls. Ten seconds later, the crack of wood shattering on the breakers reverberated through the mountains.
Until the storm abated and the level of the gorged stream dropped significantly, there would be no way of crossing it.
His smile broadened as he studied the trail in the sloppy mud that led into the steep jungle. Their prey were now effectively isolated on the peak above with no means of escape.
Everything had fallen into place more perfectly than he ever could have hoped. All that remained now was to follow the path laid out before them to their ultimate destination, loot the ruins of everything of value, and make sure that no witnesses survived. After that, it would be easy enough to float their haul down the river to where multiple millions of dollars awaited them.
Or rather, awaited him.
He glanced at McMasters, who remained blissfully ignorant. Once they neared Pomacochas with their treasure, he would have ample opportunity to end their partnership and countless places to hide the evidence.
The only loose end would be Monahan, and that little prick would be simple enough to make disappear with a single, well-placed phone call. A call he looked forward to making.
In his mind's eye, he saw an Italian villa on a hillside overlooking the tranquil blue of the Caribbean Sea.
It was only a matter of time now.
But in the interim, there was still plenty of fun to be had. They were closing in for the kill. Soon the valley would echo with the screams of the dying before silence once again descended upon this lost world.
There was only one variable for which he couldn't account, if it was even a variable at all.
He pictured the carcasses they had disinterred from the bundles buried in the statuary. A shiver rippled down his spine. He chased away the thought. Surely nothing like that could have survived this long, even so high in the unexplored Andes. Never mind the fact that the desiccated corpses couldn't have been more than several hundred years old or the fact that Jones had been mercilessly ripped apart in a manner consistent with what he would have expected. There was no problem that couldn't be solved by the assault rifle on his shoulder. He would stay vigilant, and unlike Jones, he was an excellent soldier. Nothing on this planet would be able to catch him unaware. Not even those hideous creatures from the filthy mummy wraps.
'Are you ready to do this?' McMasters asked. He shrugged his pack into place on his shoulders and clasped his Colt IAR in both hands. 'If we want to be in position before nightfall, we'd better get moving.'
Tasker looked to the sky. Between the low ceiling of storm clouds and the elongating shadow of the mountain peak, darkness would soon be upon them. The thrill of the endgame surged through him.
'After you,' he said, gesturing to the line of sloppy tracks that led into the dense forest.
He followed his temporary partner into the jungle for the culmination of the hunt that had begun many miles and days ago.
In a matter of hours, a new river would flow, a river of blood, and a fortune in gold would be his.
Chapter Nine
I
Morton and Webber no longer stood guard over the tunnel into the cliff when they arrived. Winded, Sam slowed to a jog, while Merritt fell back behind her and stopped dead in his tracks. She was soaked to the bone, and every muscle ached from the high altitude exertion. She tried not to think about everything she had seen, but the images of the remains shoved to the forefront of her mind in grainy still-lifes reminiscent of old crime scene photographs. The memories were sterile enough to allow her to distance herself from them; however, the implications assaulted her like fresh wounds inflicted in her gray matter.
Somewhere along the trail, they had passed from the world she knew and understood, through the residua of a past she had until now only been able to imagine, into a nightmare landscape of bloodshed and death.
And even now, she couldn't help but be amazed by the sights that greeted her when she entered the dark crevice.
Jay flicked on the light mounted to his camera and directed it at the walls as they pressed deeper into the mountain. Countless recessed arches had been chiseled into the stone and filled with bones. The skulls faced her, while the rest of the jumbled skeletons had been crammed into the spaces behind them. A quick flicker of gold reflected the light.
'Did you see that?' Sam asked. 'Shine your light over there again.'
Jay directed the beam back into the alcove. A golden sparkle winked through the optic canal in the skull's eye socket.
'There's something inside,' he said.
Sam reached through the sticky spider webs and lifted the aged skull from the centuries of accumulated dust. The occipital portion of the cranium had been cut away to create room for the object that rested on the rock shelf. It was egg-shaped and filigreed with a golden design fused to the rounded surface, a stunning piece of craftsmanship. More obsidian, she realized. The volcanic rock had been smoothed and polished, and decorated with a stylized image that depicted a man made of squares holding a sharp-toothed monster with a plume of feathers on its head at bay with a spear.
'It's an Ica stone,' she gasped. Her world had suddenly tilted on its ear.
She replaced the skull over the stone and moved to the next archway. Similarly lifting the cracked skull, she exposed another stone nearly identical to the first, only the man in the design appeared to be riding the back of a
