them in the otherwise infinite darkness. If not for the screech of animals and the chirps of insects, it was easy to imagine they were paddling through outer space.
Five miles into their trek, Lieutenant Foch made a quick hand gesture and the paddlers reacted instantly. He’d seen something through his goggles. They’d been traveling close to the right bank and at Foch’s signal they angled the raft closer to shore, holding their paddles inches from the river so that any water dripping from the blades wouldn’t make a sound. A ripple of tension washed through the team.
A minute later, a
For four hours they moved against the current, each team member taking turns at the paddles. As a point of pride when their turn came up, Mercer and Lauren managed to eke out a faster pace than any of the others without compromising their stealth. An hour after taking the paddles, Foch placed a hand on Mercer’s arm to stop him from going on. Lauren paused as well. The lieutenant silently pointed to their right, where a tiny stream fed into the river. Mercer and Lauren obediently rowed them to the brook. Like Venetian gondoliers they used their paddles to pole them up the shallow stream. Five hundred yards into the jungle, a three-foot waterfall blocked any further progress.
“Good enough.” Foch spoke so quietly that even just a few feet away his words were more of an impression than a noise. “We’ll stash the boat here and head out on foot at dawn.”
“Where are we?” Lauren asked.
“According to my map and this”-he held up a GPS receiver-“we’re five miles below where the River of Ruin joins the Rio Tuira. I believe this stream is fed from water coming off the back side of the volcano.” He and Mercer had fixed the route during their earlier conversation.
In the few minutes it took to rig a mosquito netting all six people had become smorgasbords to countless stinging insects. Only the one soldier ordered to remain awake on guard duty seemed to care. The others were asleep in seconds.
Dawn was a half hour away when they were woken by their picket. They took ten minutes to take care of their bodies’ needs, refill their canteens with purified water, and give their weapons a final check before their march up the stream. The soldier who’d stayed awake all night would remain hidden with the Zodiac, his stomach filled with caffeine pills. Foch took point and the other soldier, a German named Hauer, had the drag slot. Keeping to the stream bank allowed them to move easier through the jungle and maintain a constant fifteen-yard separation without getting lost in the dense undergrowth.
They hoped to be back at the boat in four or five hours, yet everyone carried enough equipment and food to sustain them for a few days. Neither Mercer nor Lauren was armed with anything heavier than their pistols.
Humidity rose with the sun. The air became so thick Mercer felt like he could drink it. Rather than refreshing his system, each breath seemed to suck away his strength. The stink of rotting vegetation clung to the back of his throat. And he had to discipline himself not to slap at the bugs that bit into his exposed hands and neck. The Legionnaires appeared immune to the discomfort, as did Lauren Vanik. Mercer suffered in silence.
Bruneseau was the oldest person on the patrol, carried twenty extra pounds in his gut and had a two-pack- a-day cigarette habit, yet when Mercer looked behind to check on the spy, he was moving with the suppleness of a jungle cat. He wasn’t even sweating that hard. In contrast, Mercer’s skin felt slick with perspiration and he had to wipe a continuous stream of salt water from his eyes.
The rain forest was too tangled for them to see more than fifty paces in any direction and dripping leaves hovered just feet over their heads. Sunlight was filtered by the greenery, making shadows more murky and ominous. Everything had an indistinct quality, as if viewed from underwater, like they were swimming through a tidal pool rather than walking through a jungle. Only occasionally would a shaft of light penetrate the canopy and beam against the forest floor.
For an hour they hiked along the stream, contorting their bodies around obstacle courses of fallen trees and bushes to avoid making the tiniest sound. Foch finally came to a halt, hunkering down to await the others. He pointed up the hill that had slowly emerged from the jungle. It was the lower flank of the volcano. Above them was the lake. He allowed the team twenty minutes to rest, moving to each person to pantomime questions about their physical condition. No one spoke. Liu Yousheng could very well have guards stationed on the mountain’s rim looming hundreds of feet above them.
Foch went out first, slithering through the jungle on his stomach, his FAMAS assault rifle clamped in his hands. After moving only five feet away, it was as if he’d been swallowed. Ten minutes later he returned, sliding backward with exaggerated slowness. He didn’t rustle a single branch and barely moved the grasses growing along the slope of the mountain.
He pressed his mouth to Mercer’s ear. “There’s no one on top of the hill, but I could hear machinery from inside the caldera. I assume something’s happening on the shores of the lake.”
“Liu’s excavating equipment,” Mercer whispered back. Foch nodded.
“They sound like they are on the far side. I think it’s safe for all of us to go up.” Foch gave a thumbs-up to Bruneseau, Lauren, and Hauer.
Following in the path he’d blazed, the team crawled up the hill, moving out from the jungle cover for the last hundred feet below the summit. The grass growing along the slope was at least a meter tall, dense, and as stiff as aluminum. It sliced into skin like knife blades. More insects feasted on the shallow wounds. Once in the open, the sun beat down like a hammer, but when Mercer looked up he could see a wall of black clouds moving across the sky. Rain wouldn’t be far behind.
The storm would provide excellent cover, but would make the hike back to the Zodiac a miserable slog.
Elbows and knees aching from the crawling climb, Mercer reached the crest of the hill. Before he could take even a second to gather his bearings, Foch dragged him into the protection of a small fold in the earth and waited to haul the others behind cover when they reached the top. Only when he knew he couldn’t be observed from below did Mercer concentrate on the vista spread out below him.
The broad lake was fifty feet beneath their natural redoubt. He could clearly see the small island at its center. It looked undisturbed. Lauren moved next to him and they exchanged proud smirks, both thinking of how they’d cheated death that night. Only when he scanned along the shore could he see anything different about the isolated body of water.
From this distance, it looked like an entire army of laborers was tearing into the walls of dirt surrounding the lake. The shafts that Gary had dug over the past months were puny in comparison to these vast excavations. Hatcherly-and he assumed it was Hatcherly-had airlifted excavating machines to the lake, where they ripped huge furrows out of the mountain with their hydraulic arms. Waste dirt was bulldozed into the lake and brown stains of mud bloomed from the shore. Workers in hard hats helped guide the vehicles while others, natives it looked like at this extreme range, sifted through mounds of spoil with hand-held screens. Men with automatic weapons watched over their labors, vigilant for the gleam of gold in the overburden.
Long canvas tents had been erected for the workers, along with a field kitchen, and latrine pits and a garbage dump for the refuse generated by at least a hundred humans. There was a sleek helicopter resting on the beach, its rotor blades as limp as palm fronds, and several aluminum boats with outboard engines tied to a dock made of empty fuel barrels and sheets of plywood.
Mercer’s fears that the looting of archeological sites had turned high tech were dead-on. Hatcherly had erected a town for their robbers, brought in supplies from Panama City in the chopper, and, because of the remoteness, could operate with virtual impunity.
All the discomfort he’d endured getting to this point fell away as his anger grew. He wasn’t aware of the cuts on his hands or the raw insect bites on his neck. He felt nothing but horror at what was happening below him. His lips curled into a cruel smile. Once he had his evidence, at least this part of Hatcherly’s activities on the isthmus would be over. He pulled the pack from his shoulders and withdrew the camera. He snapped off half a role of film before turning to Bruneseau.
“I can’t see faces from this range,” he whispered. “We need to get closer.”
Foch had heard the request. “We can crawl back over the peak of the hill, circle around to just above the main part of the camp and take your shots from there.”
