Iron bent, rivets exploded and the bridge buckled and fell, collapsing in on itself and dropping into the depths of the gorge.
Traveling slightly downhill, on loose footing, at high speed, Kurt knew instantly that they couldn’t stop in time.
He jammed his foot on the brake pedal, bled off half the speed and then turned up the embankment, skidding, bouncing and nearly flipping the Range Rover in the process.
Traveling uphill, the Rover slowed rapidly and Kurt regained control. What had been a desperate maneuver to avoid a thousand-foot swan dive now became a possible way out.
He dropped the transmission into a lower gear and kept climbing. With a deft touch, he turned away from the gorge and traversed the slope at an angle. The four-wheel drive kept them moving, spinning the wheels in the soft gravel, bouncing them over the rocks and powering through the thorny bushes that clung to the incline.
Emma held on in the backseat. They were climbing so sharply that it felt like she would slide out the back. But the engine of the Rover was in the front, which kept the weight forward, and every time Kurt felt the front wheels lifting, he pulled off the gas for just a second.
They were still climbing the hill when their pursuers came out of the tunnel at a much slower pace. Emma watched as they stopped in the middle of the road, looking up at their escaping prey.
At first, they appeared confused, and the man holding the rocket-propelled grenade launcher steadied himself and aimed, leaning against the back edge of the sunroof.
Emma was faster, raising the Beretta and raining a hail of bullets down on them. She emptied the entire magazine, peppering both cars with multiple shots and hitting the rocket man in the shoulder.
He twisted with the impact and squeezed the trigger.
The RPG fired. Its smoke trail stretched upward across the terrain, drawing a line from the road below directly across the top of the Range Rover and into the ridge above them. It detonated amid a wall of weathered rock.
The mountain shook and a long section of the ridge broke loose and came tumbling toward them.
Kurt turned the wheel, angling to the right and fighting against gravity. He couldn’t turn any sharper without rolling the vehicle, but even that would be better than being crushed in a landslide.
Fist-sized rocks bounced their way, pounding the doors and smashing the windshield. A wave of dust engulfed them. They pulled clear just as half the mountainside roared past behind them.
Daiyu stared upward from the passenger seat of the white Audi as man-made thunder echoed through the canyon. When the smoke from the explosion cleared, she spotted movement, but it wasn’t the American Rover tumbling and burning, it was the mountain itself. With gathering speed, a large mass of gravel and heavy rock was surging their way.
“Move!” she shouted.
Jian slammed the car into reverse, looked over his shoulder. The transmission whined as the car sped backward. A hail of gravel pinged off their hood as they rushed into the tunnel.
The BMW driver reacted too slowly. Instead of backing up, he tried to turn, and his car had just begun moving when the main body of the avalanche thundered across the road, a tsunami of stone and sand. It hit with surprising speed, launching the car off the cliff like a child’s toy swept angrily from a table.
The landslide continued for another few minutes. The large rocks settled first, but the sand and gravel continued to pour down, filling the entrance to the tunnel, until dust choked the air and all that could be seen was a hazy beam of light coming from the Audi’s front end.
High above, Kurt and Emma had skirted the landslide, avoiding the worst of the damage. They picked their way upward toward the next section of the road, surging onto it with a final effort.
“I didn’t think we were going to survive that,” Emma announced.
Stabilized on flat ground once again, Kurt stopped to look back. “Never entered my mind.”
“Think that’s the end of them?”
Looking down the embankment, he saw nothing but an impenetrable cloud of dust. “No idea,” he said. “Doesn’t matter which way; even if they’re gone, we’ll have others to deal with soon enough.”
As Emma returned to the front seat, Kurt thumped the shattered windshield with his palm. It fell away, peeling off the A-pillars like matted paper. Able to see clearly now, he donned a pair of sunglasses, put the Rover in gear and continued on.
They were twenty miles from La Jalca and every minute counted.
27
Kurt drove the rest of the way at a reduced speed because the suspension had been damaged in the climb and was groaning with every mile. An hour later, they were nearing the ruins.
“This is the turn,” Emma said.
Kurt pulled off the road. The new track was little more than two ruts in the ground, with a long furrow of stray grass standing knee-high between them. It took them into a narrowing valley past small herds of grazing animals and terraced fields abundant with crops. Both sights suggested a large community nearby, though Kurt saw no houses.
“I thought this was an archaeological site,” he said.
Emma nodded. “As did I. Seems more like a working farm.”
As they continued into the valley, the ridges and peaks grew higher and the gorge became narrower. When an encampment of tents appeared in the distance, Kurt pulled over and parked.
“I suggest we walk from here,” he said. “I don’t really want to start off by explaining how our vehicle ended up like this.”
Emma laughed. “You might want to practice that speech; you still have to turn this thing in.”
They climbed out of the battered Rover, pulled backpacks over their shoulders and began a short hike.
On foot, without the roofline of the SUV interfering, the view was spectacular. The excavation was taking place in the closed end of a box canyon. Three high peaks dominated the landscape, towering above the ridgeline around them. The cliffsides were honeycombed with caves and marked with several distinct layers of construction. They were also covered with a scaffolding of vertical and horizontal ropes. Another set of wires stretched across the sky like power lines, spanning the canyon from one peak to the next.
“Quite a setup,” Kurt noted.
Emma nodded but didn’t reply. To her, the canyon felt tight and compressed—the kind of place a Western gunfighter might find himself surrounded and ambushed. She kept close to Kurt, aware that the Beretta in her pack would not be easy to reach if something did go wrong.
As they neared the tents, a group of men came out to meet them. They stood in the path, arms folded, eyes squinting, mouths tight.
“Hola,” Kurt said, thrusting out a hand toward the closest of them. “My name is Kurt Austin. I’d like to speak with Urco, if I could.”
The man stood like a statue. He was shorter than Kurt but well built, with muscular forearms and bulbous shoulders. He had a different look from the Peruvians Kurt had known; broader and shorter, with a wider face; more indigenous, less European. His skin was a darker, copper shade and his eyes seemed larger.
He neither responded to the words nor reached for Kurt’s hand.
Kurt lowered his arm and glanced at Emma. “Maybe you’d better try.”
She repeated the greeting in Spanish. Adding something about them being interested in archaeology and the Chachapoya and mentioning that they’d seen Urco on the Internet.
This brought some chatter among the group, and the burly man nodded. “Me llamo Vargas,” he said, unfolding his arms and pointing to the cliff top. “Urco,” he said, before adding in English, “Up there.”
Vargas led them to the base of the cliff. Several ropes dangled down from above.
“I’m not great with heights,” Emma said. “Maybe I’ll just wait here.”
Looking at a climb of several hundred feet, Kurt wasn’t all that excited himself. “
I don’t suppose he could come down?”
Vargas just stared.
“Never mind.”
Kurt was given a safety harness and led to the nearest rope, where Vargas handed him a pair of well-used work gloves. They were loose and worn smooth—not exactly fit for gripping a nylon rope.
“To climb?” Kurt asked, making a hand-over-hand motion.
Vargas shook his head. “No . . . fly.”
He placed Kurt’s hands on the rope and then snapped the safety harness to a hook using a heavy carabiner.
Kurt saw instantly what was about to happen. He gripped the rope as Vargas released a cast-iron clamp attached to a second rope.
A heavy weight suspended up above began to fall and Kurt—whose rope was attached to that weight by means of a pulley—was lifted off the ground and hauled upward.
The initial launch was sudden, but after that the ride was smooth.
He passed small dwellings carved out of holes in the stone. Open rooms were empty except for ladders that went from one level to the next.
Above them, he passed a row of stone figures carved into the living rock; they looked almost bird-like, but with enlarged heads and human bodies and features. They reminded him of Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Higher up, in smaller niches and openings, he saw mummified bodies and weaponry; spears and morning stars. These were the mountaintop burial sites of the Chachapoya warriors.
He was approaching the block, tackle and pulley arrangement, which had allowed him to ascend so quickly, when Vargas applied the brake. He came to a stop ten feet from the crest of the mountain. A ladder affixed to the cliffside on his right led the rest of the way.
“You’ve made it this far,” a voice boomed from above. “Now comes the tricky part.”
Kurt looked up to see a face peering over the edge at him. It was weathered and creased from years in the sun, topped by shaggy dark hair and half covered by a gray beard as thick as wool on a sheep. Gleeful, dark eyes focused on Kurt. The man chuckled as he pointed to the ladder.
“I see it,” Kurt said.
“And you see the dilemma?”
Kurt saw that, too. The ladder was several feet beyond his reach. And even if he could stretch out to touch it, he would have to disconnect the safety harness from the rope in order to transfer to the bottom few rungs.
He looked down for a moment and then wished he hadn’t. “Now I know what the window washers on the Freedom Tower feel like.”
He swung his feet toward the ladder, pulled them back in the other direction and then swung them again. The rope began to move, sliding side to side with his motion. On the third arc, Kurt stretched out and grasped the metal frame of the ladder. Pulling himself over to it, he set his feet, wrapped one arm around the closest available rung and then disconnected the harness. Keeping his gaze skyward, he climbed to the top and pulled himself onto solid ground.
The man with the gray beard offered a slight bow. “I congratulate you. It takes most people several minutes before they figure out how to do that. And even then, many are reluctant to let go of the rope. Indeed, one reporter who came to interview me last year flat out refused. He just mumbled a few questions from the harness and then asked to be lowered to the ground as quickly as possible.”
The man allowed himself a belly laugh.
Kurt chuckled and turned to take in the view. They were standing on a platform in the sky, the highest spot for miles around. A major valley loomed to the east and north while the teeth of lower ridges loomed to the west. “That reporter missed out,” he said. “Reminds me of a spot called Eagle’s Nest in Colorado.”
“There was a time when eagles made their homes on this aerie,” the man said. “Long ago.”
Kurt noticed that the man spoke English far better than Vargas had. “Since you’re the only one up here, I’ll assume you’re Urco.” He offered a hand. “Kurt Austin.”
The man looked at Kurt’s outstretched palm and offered an uncomfortable grin. “I am Urco,” he said without moving. “Pleased to meet you.”
For the second time, Kurt pulled his arm back. “Not too fond of shaking hands around here, are you? Is it some custom I’m unaware of?”
Urco shook his head. “I’m afraid we are . . . germaphobes . . . of a sort.”
“Really?” Kurt said. “You live out in the wild, dig around in the dirt, unearthing dead bodies, and you’re afraid of germs?”
“I know it sounds strange,” Urco replied, “but, in a way, it’s the bodies that remind us to be wary. These dwellings and burial chambers are from the last stronghold of the Chachapoya people. They held out against the might of the Inca for centuries. They even resisted the conquistadors after Pizarro and his one hundred and sixty-eight men defeated Atahualpa and his six thousand Inca warriors. Unfortunately, their next enemy was one they could not defeat.”
“Disease?” Kurt said.
Urco nodded. “Smallpox. It ravaged the settlements, killing nearly everyone it found. Those who stayed died. Those who fled brought the disease with them, spreading the plague to other villages. I’ve found writings that describe a traveler coming home to a village of two thousand people to find no one alive. Most had died horribly, covered with pustules. Others had killed each other when fighting and chaos set in—as they always do when social order breaks down.”
Urco waved his arms about in a sweeping gesture. “This place was a nation once. And then it was gone.”
Kurt nodded. He knew the grim statistics. European diseases had hit the New World hard. South America fared the worst. According to many experts, smallpox, influenza and measles wiped out ninety-five percent of the indigenous population.
Urco continued. “The men and women who work on this project are all descendants of the Chachapoya. Some nearly pure-blooded. Others, like myself, have a mix of European and indigenous genes. Of course, we’re not really afraid of disease anymore, but avoiding the touch of outsiders is one way we remind ourselves what happened to our ancestors.”
“I assure you,” Kurt said. “I’ve had all my proper shots and inoculations.”
Urco stared at him for a second and then began to laugh. He waved Kurt over and sat down, leaning against a slight rise in the ridge that acted like a natural chair even if it was made of stone. Beside him was a laptop computer. A wire from the computer led to an exterior antenna propped up and pointed at an almost flat angle to the northwest.
Kurt recognized the antenna as a type used to communicate via satellite. “Checking your e-mail?”
“Yes, actually,” Urco said. “The satellite we use is very low on the horizon this time of year. You can’t get a signal from the valley floor. So I come up here every day. Sometimes twice a day. I tell the workers I’m conversing with the gods. They remind me to check my battery level or the gods will never hear me.”
“I’m very impressed with the dig,” Kurt said. “I assume all the ropes are to keep you from damaging the excavation sites.”
“Partly,” Urco said. “The Peruvian government owns the site and they won’t permit us to set foot in the burial areas—something I agree with. As a result, we have to learn what we can by looking in from the outside. That means being suspended midair like an acrobat. I must admit, it sometimes makes things tricky, especially if the wind gets up, which it often does. But after a while, it becomes second nature.”
Kurt studied the setup. Three high summits around the valley acted like the points of a jagged crown. The face of each peak was adorned with a rope and pulley system like the one that had lifted Kurt. The scaffolding ropes were offset from these, and the third set of taut cables stretched from one peak to the next. Highest to middle. Middle to lowest. And from there, back down to the camp below.
The heavy ropes reminded Kurt of the recreational zip line operations marketed to tourists all over the world.
“Your people
use these lines to get from peak to peak,” Kurt said.
“Precisely,” Urco said. “They allow quick access from one crest to the next without having to go all the way down and back up again. I make the circuit at least twice a day myself, inspecting the work. It’s a one-way journey, of course—since those crests are lower than this one. But it’s quite exhilarating.”
“I can imagine,” Kurt said. “I’d like to try it.”
“You’re more than welcome to,” Urco said. “But something tells me you didn’t come all this way to talk about ropes and zip lines.”
“No,” Kurt admitted. “I’m looking for some information. But I’m not a reporter. I work for the American government, for an agency called NUMA.”
“Ah, yes,” Urco replied. “I know of this organization.”
“You do?”
“When your work is dependent on grants, you become very familiar with the world’s governmental organizations. Over the last ten years, I’ve applied to every department, of every agency, in every country, in the Americas. Or so it seems. I’ve petitioned NUMA several times. I’m afraid you’ve always turned me down.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Kurt grunted.
Urco laughed. “Not to worry. It’s all part of the business. But tell me, why would an organization that studies the sea be interested in the mountains of Peru and the people who lived there?”
“It’s complicated,” Kurt said. “The other night, you posted a video of a meteor crossing the sky. We wanted to know more about it. Can you tell me what you saw? When exactly it happened? Which direction you were looking?”
“It was very early in the morning,” Urco said. “I get up before dawn each day. The sunrise is my affirmation. That morning, we were going to film a new chamber we’d uncovered. I was checking the cameras to make sure the batteries were charged. As I went about my routine, I looked up and saw a light in the sky. At first I thought it was a star, but it was moving with great speed. I had the camera in my hand, so I pointed and filmed. Pure serendipity. I’m not even sure the video was focused.”