Scott quickly raised his M-16 but at that exact moment an enormous black shape burst out from a dark fissure in the rock wall behind him and slammed into his back, sending him flying off the edge of the pathway and down into the water below, where a whole cluster of other black shapes converged on him in an instant.
Race stared at the monitor in stunned awe as he watched the whole horrific scene from Scott's point of view. All he saw was the blur of slashing razor-like teeth and flailing human arms, all overlaid with Scott's own gasps and futile screams.
Then, not a moment later, the camera went under the surface and the screen cut to hash and abruptly there was silence.
In the crater, a roar of gunfire shattered the unnatural stillness as the German soldier Graf jammed down on the trigger of his M-16.
But no sooner had a flaring tongue of fire spewed out from the muzzle of his gun than—smack!—Graf was pounced upon from above, by a cat that had been lurking on the rock wall high above him!
Further down the path, Chucky Wilson spun instantly to see the struggle between Graf and the cat, saw that the German paratrooper was putting up one hell of a fight.
And then suddenly—riiiiippppp!—Graf's throat came clear of his neck and his body fell instantly limp.
Wilson blanched. 'Oh, luck.'
And at that moment the cat standing over Graf's body slowly looked up at him and stared into his eyes.
Wilson froze. The big cat stepped ominously forward, over Graf's immobile body, toward him.
Wilson spun.
Only to see another massive black cat standing on the path behind him, cutting off his retreat.
Nowhere to run.
Nowhere to hide.
Wilson turned again and saw the fissures and crevices in the rock wall and for a second thought there might be an escape there. He looked into one of the shadowy fissures in the rockface—
—and found himself staring at the smiling face of one of the cats.
And then with a suddenness that was nothing short of horrifying, the big cat's jaws rushed toward him at phe nomenal speed and in an instant there was nothing.
Everyone just stared at the monitor in silence.
'Oh my God,“ Gaby Lopez breathed.
'Shit,' Lauren said.
The four remaining Green Berets just gazed at the monitor, speechless.
Race turned to the German zoologist, Krauss. 'They only come out at night, do they?'
'Well,' Krauss said, bristling. “Quite obviously, the darkness at the base of the crater allows them to spend the greater part of the day there—'
'Kennedy,' Nash said sharply 'what's the status on that extraction team?'
'I'm still trying to get through to Panama, sir,' Doogie said from over by the radio pack. 'Signal keeps dropping out.'
'Keep trying.' Nash looked at his watch.
It was 11:30 am.
“Shit,” he said.
He wondered what had happened to Romano and his team. Last he heard, they'd taken off from Cuzco at 7:45 pm last night. They should have been here by now. What had happened to them? Could the Nazis have shot them down?
Or had they just misread the totems and gotten hopelessly lost?
Whatever the case, if they were still alive, one thing was certain: they would find the village eventually.
Which meant he now had two hostile groups on their way to Vilcafor.
“Shit,' he said again.
Doogie came over.
'The extraction team took off from Panama one hour ago—three choppers: two Comanches, one Black Hawk.
They estimate that they'll be here by late afternoon, at approximately 1700 hours. I put up a UHF signal, so they can home in on that and extract us.'
As Doogie reported his news to Nash, a strange thought hit Race: Why wasn't the Army extracting them via Cuzco? Why were they sending choppers down from Panama ?
Surely the easiest way out of here was to go back the same way they had come.
It was at that moment that a sentence from the Santiago Manuscript popped into his head.
A thief never uses the same entrance twice.
Nash turned to Van Lewen. 'Do we have access to the SAT-
