Van Lewen led the way, charging through one of the narrow stone passageways of the quenko beneath Vilcafor.
He held his M-16 pressed against his shoulder, illuminating the cramped tunnel in front of them with the tiny flash light that was attached to its barrel.
Race, Doogie, Molke and the two BKA agents hurried along the dark stone passageway behind him. Doogie and the three Germans held M-16s in their hands. Race just carried the silver SIG-Sauer.
Although he didn't want to say it, Race was scared out of his mind. But he was where he wanted to bewith Van Lewen and Doogie and the Germans, going after the idol, going after the Nazis. Doing something.
The quenko, however, didn't help ease his mind.
It was like some horrific kind of dungeon—a nightmarish subterranean maze with close stone walls and slippery muddy floors.
Enormous hairy spiders scuttled away into dark crevices as the six of them hustled past, while obscenely fat snakes slithered through the stagnant mud on the tunnel floor, almost tripping them over. And it was claustrophobic— claustrophobic as hell each slimy passageway that he saw was barely three feet wide.
Van Lewen ran quickly in the lead.
'Take the third tunnel on the right,' Race said from behind him. 'And then zigzag, starting with the left.'
At exactly the same time as Race and the others were dashing through the underground maze, Heinrich Anistaze was reaching the bottom of the tableland's cliff-face.
He strode over to the riverbank where he stepped straight into a rubber Zodiac speedboat.
He keyed his radio mike. 'Demolition team. Report.'
He received no reply.
Through the quenko they ran.
Running hard, running fast, ducking left, cutting right, bursting through spiderwebs, tripping over forty-foot snakes, stumbling through the slick moss-covered tunnels of the ghastly subterranean maze.
'Hey, Van Lewen,' Race said in between breaths as they jogged down a long section of tunnel.
'Yeah?' Van Lewen replied.
'What's the 80s Club?'
'The 80s Club?'
'Cochrane mentioned it last night while you guys were unpacking the choppers, but he wouldn't say what it was.
'I'd like to know what it is before I die.'
Van Lewen snorted as he ran. 'I can tell you, but it's pretty, uh, unrefined.'
'Try me.'
'Okay…' Van Lewen said. 'It goes like this. To become a member of the 80s Club, you must have had sex with a girl who was born in the 1980s.'
'Oh, man!” Race said, cringing.
'I told you it was unrefined,' Van Lewen said.
They ran on.
The six of them had been running for about seven minutes through the quenko when—abruptly—Van Lewen turned a corner and slammed into a solid stone wall.
Only it wasn't a wall at all.
It was a doorstone.
In fact, it was a doorstone not unlike the one in the door way of the citadel itself—a square-shaped boulder with a rounded base that could be easily rolled open from the inside, but which was impregnable from without.
Race and Van Lewen rolled the boulder aside—
—and they were instantly assailed by the roar of a mighty waterfall.
A light spray of water hit their faces as they were con fronted by the sight of a curtain of falling water not ten feet in front of them.
Race scanned the area around them.
They were standing on a path—an Incan path—-carved into the rockwall behind the waterfall.
They were at the edge of the tableland already.
The roar of the surging waterfall above them was incredible. It drowned out all other sound. Van Lewen had to shout over it to be heard.
'This way!' he yelled, hurrying left.
The rocky path was wet and slippery, but Race and the others managed to keep their footing as they hustled along its length behind the falling curtain of water.
Even though they moved quickly, it still took them a full minute to reach the edge of the curtain—the waterfall above them was wide, and they had emerged from the quenko at its very centre.
