Burial Ground (7 page)

Unfortunately, his geographical guess hadn't
been as accurate as he would have liked.

The map covered a secluded area of roughly
twenty-five square miles of steep mountains and sheer canyons
separated by close to five thousand nearly vertical feet of lush
tropical forest. A blotchy haze eclipsed a good portion of the
detail from the cloud cover that clung to the higher ground
essentially year round, part of the reason so much of this region
remained uncharted. A rainbow of pixellated color dotted the
screen, concentrated in some areas and diffused in others. The
sides of the grid featured wedge-shaped dead zones, a consequence
of the Landsat's scan line correction system malfunction in 2003,
where the satellite was unable to accurately rectify the
geographical data. On the very edge of one such anomaly was a
bright splash of white that reflected a distinct mineral
concentration near the summit of a ten thousand-foot peak. The
mineral signature was unmistakable, but the size of the lode was
indeterminate thanks to the unfortunate cropping.

This was the reason he had sent his son to
his death.

"You should probably get some sleep," Colton
said. Leo had been so absorbed in thought that he hadn't heard the
man enter his office. "We have a long day ahead of us
tomorrow."

Leo nodded, but he knew there would be no
rest for him tonight. He'd barely slept since he lost contact with
Hunter weeks ago anyway.

"I trust all of the pieces are in place,"
Leo said.

Colton eased into the chair across from him.
"As you requested. Dr. Russell's flight will arrive in Lima shortly
after ours." He paused. "He's only going to slow us down. He's gone
soft as a marshmallow. Are you completely sure he's the best
choice?"

"I need to know the significance of the
feathers. Hunter wouldn't have packed them, especially if he were
abandoning camp under duress, if they didn't have some meaning.
I'll carry Russell across the entire Andes range on my back if I
have to. If anyone can discover their importance, it's him."

"And this documentary crew? You know how I
feel about it. Are you sure toting them along is a good idea?"

"Advanced Explorations owns the principle
interest in Four Winds Productions for this very reason. I want
everything recorded. This will be Hunter's memorial. And also our
cover story. We don't want to draw more attention to ourselves than
necessary, especially considering we're potentially dealing with
tens of millions of dollars here. Everything needs to be done by
the book, and it needs to be documented."

Colton shrugged, but the tight line of his
lips betrayed his disapproval.

"I've hand-selected the four men who will be
working as our excavation labor," Colton said, changing the
subject. "They are all exceptionally well-qualified for their
designated tasks." He smirked. "I only hope they can dig, too."

"What about the details of Hunter's
death?"

"Other than my guys, no one has any reason
to believe it was anything other than an accident."

Leo leaned back and sighed wearily.

"And none of them suspect the true purpose
of this expedition?"

"You mean the gold ore?"

"Recovering the gold is a foregone
conclusion. We only need to formalize the logistics."

Leo rose from his chair and turned his back
on Colton. He could feel the man's stare burning into his back as
he surveyed his realm, watching as the distant city lights twinkled
into being and the shadow of the coming night settled over the
land.

"I intend to find out who's responsible for
my son's death," Leo said in the tired voice of an old man. "And
then I'm going to kill him."

Pomacochas, Peru

October 25
^th

3:26 a.m. PET

Merritt knifed down through the wispy clouds
that would shroud Laguna Pomacochas until the morning sun burned
them off. The night was a solid black, save the flashers on his
wings, which diffused into the mist, pale haloes of light that
barely penetrated the cabin. He had made this run to and from
Chiclayo so many times that he could have done it blindfolded, only
this time he was thankful for even the wan glow so he could study
his passengers. They weren't his normal fare. They obviously
weren't tourists, nor were they locals. Usually, a flight like this
in such an old plane, which rocked and swayed and made popping
sounds as though rivets snapped with every hint of turbulence, had
his passengers constantly fidgeting with their flimsy lap belts and
turning green around the gills, but this group appeared unfazed.
This definitely wasn't their first sojourn into the South American
wilds.

"We're going to circle around the lake
before landing on the water and taxiing to that pier you can
vaguely make out through the clouds on the western shore by the
town proper." He spoke into the microphone, though only the woman
in the copilot's chair was wearing cans. The other six sat in the
seats behind them, faces alternately hidden and revealed by
shadows. With the roar of the engines and the shriek of wind-shear,
they wouldn't have been able to hear him even if he shouted at the
top of his lungs.

The woman leaned forward so she could see
past him through his window. He dipped the wing to give her a
better view. Like the others, she looked as though she had spent
the past twenty hours in transit, yet when she saw the darkened
silhouette of the City of Pomacochas rising up the slope beyond the
pier, she lit up. A few stray strands of jet-black hair had slipped
out from beneath her headset. She brushed them aside and stared
through him with the most exotic eyes he had ever seen.

"First time in Peru?" he asked.

She smiled as though he had asked her the
most asinine question ever.

"Not even close."

"First time in Pomacochas then?"

"From the air."

He banked the seaplane around the eastern
shore and started his rapid descent. The clouds rose away from them
to expose the placid lake, a sheet of fresh tar against the asphalt
darkness. The plane's lights reflected back up at them like
submerged jewels.

The other plane, carrying the remaining
members of the group, including a film crew, and the lion's share
of their supplies, dropped from the mist behind him.

For whatever reason, the man who had booked
his services on behalf of Advanced Exploration Associates
International had specifically requested him. Merritt liked to
think that it was because his reputation preceded him, but he was
by no means a stupid man. This all went back to the body he had
found by the river. He
had
looked in the man's backpack
after all. He'd seen the golden headdress. He should have known it
was only a matter of time before word leaked and the treasure
hunters descended like vultures.

Merritt felt the heat of the woman's stare
and glanced over to find her scrutinizing him.

"So you were the one who found Hunter," she
said.

He hadn't learned the man's name---it was
better that way---but he hadn't stumbled upon so many corpses that he
didn't know exactly who she was talking about.

"I should have known," he said.

"Known what?"

"I didn't initially peg you guys as
huaqueros
. I guess I'm losing my touch."

"We are
not
grave robbers. I'm a
paleoanthropologist, for God's sake. The man you found was a good
friend of mine, a good person."

"Who just happened to have a priceless
artifact stashed in his backpack."

"How dare you judge him. Any of us for that
matter. Who do you think you are?"

"I'm a man who flies a plane, honey. That's
all. I like to keep things simple."

"You've done an excellent job. I don't think
I've met anyone simpler than you."

"Ouch," he said, and watched as she huffed,
crossed her arms over her chest, and turned to look out the
opposite window.

Merritt laughed inwardly. The girl had
spunk. No doubt about it. She radiated an inner strength, almost a
sense of self-possession, which made her positively glow.

Sure, he had been with more than his share
of beautiful women in his life, and there had even been one or two
back home who had shown long-term potential. The problem was that
none of them had ever really challenged him in any meaningful way.
They had all lacked that mythical spark, that element of passion
beyond the physical that inspired a man to follow his heart to the
ends of the earth rather than face a single moment without her. But
since coming to Peru years ago, any relationship at all sounded
like more trouble than it was worth. Of course, for the right
woman, he could probably be coaxed into giving it a whirl.

As he prepared for landing, he glanced back
at the rest of the party in the mirror to his right. The two men
directly behind him met his stare, or had they been watching him
the whole while? Every time he looked back, there they were,
studying him in the mirror even as he appraised them. A
white-haired man in his late-fifties or so, and another man perhaps
ten years Merritt's senior with eyes of stone, a military man if
he'd ever seen one, and he'd seen far more than his share.

There was definitely something going on
here, something brewing beneath the surface. He sensed a hint of
danger that he hadn't felt in a long time, an unwelcome sensation
he would have gladly lived his entire life without ever
encountering again. His heart beat faster, and his palms grew damp
on the controls. In the span of a blink, he was there again, on the
other side of the planet in an eternity of sand and rock formations
that he was certain mimicked the landscape of hell.

Smoke billowing from the mouth of the stone
orifice. Footprints in the sand, some bare, some sandaled. The
mechanical echo of his own rapid breathing inside the constrictive
rebreathing mask. The barrel of his Heckler & Koch HK416
assault rifle swinging in front of him, barely visible through the
swirling dust and smoke. Piles of rock in his path; gravel raining
from the sandstone roof. The earthen walls scored black. The
bodies...flames lapping at their clothing and hair...dark skin caked
with soot and ash...and the young woman, her wide eyes shot with
blood, one hand still at her swollen throat, deep lacerations from
where she had torn through her skin with her own fingernails...

The pontoons touched the lake with the sound
of thunder and water fired up against the underside of the fuselage
and wings. He throttled down and coasted toward the pier, desperate
for a breath of fresh air.

Hotel Spatuletail

Pomacochas, Peru

6:12 a.m.

Colton spread the maps out on the table
before him. They had rented two adjoining rooms in what passed for
a hotel in the middle of the Amazon basin, a converted Spanish
hacienda that hadn't seen so much as a paint job since the
conquistadors defeated the Inca with Christianity and smallpox. It
was little more than a square of decomposing adobe enclosing a
central courtyard with wild greenery attempting to claim the
obligatory fountain, itself a cracked-tile basin brimming with
slimy rainwater that smelled of flatus. But it didn't matter. They
were only going to be here for a single night, after which the
rooms would serve as storage for their boxes and the packing
materials they wouldn't be lugging into the mountains. The sooner
the better, he thought. He was no stranger to the type of
accommodations one must endure in such remote locales, but the
walls were alive with small green and brown lizards and several
enormous black spiders had made themselves at home inside the
mosquito netting over the beds. He expected that kind of
hospitality from the jungle, not the hotel.

He had already formalized their route into
the mountains, but there were still any number of variables for
which he couldn't account. The maps couldn't predict the depth of
the bodies of water or the speed of the current any more than they
allowed them to find trails through the dense forestation. For the
most part, experience suggested they should be able to follow
certain aspects of the topography, but that still remained to be
seen. Regardless, they had a starting point, and somewhere in the
southern portion of this twenty-five square mile grid was their
final destination.

The first thing they needed to do was
inspect the area where Hunter had washed up along the Mayu Wañu.
The medical examiner had estimated that his body had been in the
water for somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy-two hours. He
had, of course, qualified that assertion with the caveat that he
hadn't been able to examine the remains quickly enough as the body
had been delayed by the process of identification and the
ultimately unnecessary quarantine. However, a detailed inspection
of the river and its current, coupled with an educated guess as to
its level at the time, ought to help him narrow down the range
where Hunter must have entered the water. The boats had already
been reserved, and the guides would be ready to lead them up the
river before sunrise tomorrow.

But there was still one element that didn't
sit well with him.

The sharp scent of guarana coffee preceded
Gearhardt into the room. He carried a Styrofoam cup in each hand,
and set one down in front of Colton.

"Here's what passes for coffee down here,"
Gearhardt said. He sat in the chair beside Colton. "It has the
consistency of syrup and tastes like they burned it, which I didn't
think was even physically possible."

"The guarana bean has four times as much
caffeine as the coffee bean. They even use it in soft drinks."

"That doesn't make it taste any better."

"Get some cream and sugar then."

"And just when do you think I became a
woman?"