Van Lewen and Cochrane hauled the rope bridge up and looped its ends around the two stone buttresses on their side of the ravine. Now the great swooping rope bridge spanned the chasm, linking the skyscraper-like rock tower to the spiralling path that ran around it.
The rain continued to fall.
Jagged forks of brilliant white lightning began to illumi nate the sky.
'Sergeant,' Captain Scott said. 'Safety rope.'
Van Lewen immediately brought a strange-looking object out from his backpack. It was a shiny silver grappling hook of some sort. Attached to it was a coil of black nylon rope.
The tall sergeant quickly jammed the shaft of the grappling hook into the M-203 grenade launcher attached to the barrel of his M-16. Then he aimed his gun across the chasm and fired.
With a gaseous shoosh! the grappling hook shot out from Van Lewen's grenade launcher and arced gracefully over the chasm, its sharp silver claws snapping out into position as it flew, its black rope wobbling through the air behind it.
The hook landed on the tower top on the other side of the chasm and dug its claws into the base of a thick tree there. Van Lewen then secured his end of the rope to one of the stone buttresses on their side of the chasm so that now the nylon rope spanned the gorge just above the drooping suspension bridge.
'All right, everyone,' Scott said, 'keep one hand on the safety rope as you cross the bridge. If the bridge drops from under you, the rope will keep you from falling.'
Van Lewen must have seen Race go pale. 'You'll be all right. Just keep a hold of that rope and you'll make it.'
The Green Berets went first, one at a time.
The narrow rope bridge rocked and swayed beneath their weight as they walked, but it held. The rest of the group followed behind them, holding onto the nylon safety rope as they crossed the long swooping suspension bridge in the constant subtropical rain.
Race crossed the rope bridge last of all, holding onto the safety rope so hard his knuckles went white. As such, he crossed the bridge more slowly than the others, so by the time he stepped onto the ledge on the other side, they had already gone on ahead and all he saw was a damp stone stairway leading up into the foliage. He hurried up it after them.
Dripping green leaves crowded in on either side of him.
Wet fern fronds slapped against his face as he climbed the watersoaked stone slabs after the others. After about thirty seconds of climbing, he burst through a large set of branches and found himself standing in a small clearing of some sort.
Everyone else was already there. But they just stood there, motionless. At first Race didn't know what had made them stop, but then he saw that they all had their flashlights pointed up and to the left.
His gaze followed their flashlight beams and he saw it.
'Holy Christ,' he breathed.
There, situated on the highest point of the rock tower— covered in hard-packed mud and moss, concealed by weeds all around it, and glistening wet in the ever-falling rain— stood an ominous stone structure.
It was cloaked in shadow and wetness, but it was clear that this was a structure that had been designed to exude menace and power. A structure that could have had no other purpose than to inspire fear, idolatry and worship.
It was a temple.
Race stared at the dark stone temple and swallowed hard.
It looked evil.
Cold and cruel and evil.
It wasn't a very big structure. In fact, it was barely even one storey tall. But Race knew that wasn't really the case.
He guessed what they were seeing was only the very top of the temple—the tip of the iceberg—because the ruined section of it that they now saw finished too abruptly. It just disappeared into the mud beneath their feet.
Race presumed that the rest of the enormous structure lay buried in the mud beneath them, consumed by four hundred years of accumulated wet earth.
What he saw, however, was frightening enough.
The temple was roughly pyramidal in shape—two wide stone steps led up to a small cube-like structure that was no larger than the average garage. He had an idea what the cube-shaped structure was—it was a tabernacle of some sort, a holy chamber not unlike those found atop Aztec or Mayan pyramids.
A series of gruesome pictographs had been carved into the walls of the tabernacle—snarling cat-like monsters wielding scythe-like claws; dying humans screaming in agony. Cracks of age littered the stone walls of the temple.
The unending subtropical rain ran in rivulets down its carved stone walls, giving life to the characters in the horrific scenes on the walls—generating the same effect that running water had produced on the stone totem earlier.
In the centre of the tabernacle, however, lay the most intriguing aspect of the whole structure—-an entrance of some kind. A square-shaped portal.
But this portal had been stopped up. At some time in the distant past someone had wedged an enormous boulder into it, blocking it. The boulder was absolutely huge. Race guessed that it must have taken at least ten men to move it into place.
