“Out cold. And bleeding a lot. You need to look at the wound and see if there’s anything we can do.”
Spencer moved to Allie and Drake rolled away, wincing at the pain in his leg. Spencer removed Drake’s bloody shirt and studied the entry, and then lifted her gently and looked at her back.
“That’s a little bit of luck. The slug looks like it ricocheted off her shoulder blade and exited there, on the side.”
“But all the blood…”
“I can deal with that. I need to clean the wound and stitch it up after making sure no arteries were hit. I’ve dealt with worse.”
Drake’s voice sounded strangled. “We need to get a helicopter here.”
“Sure. And set down where?” Spencer looked up at the canopy over the clearing, the sky only visible in patches overhead.
“They can lower a stretcher or something.”
“Maybe so,” Spencer said, not wanting to argue. “But we’re hundreds of miles from the nearest chopper, assuming we can get one to fly into this area. I still have to work on her, or she’ll be dead by the time it could get here. She’ll have bled out.” He sat down heavily next to Drake. “What a frigging mess.”
“You said it.”
“Palenko, dead. Jack, dead. Enough natives to fill a small town. Dead.”
Drake shrugged. “Those ‘noble savages’ were child murderers and hired killers.”
“I’m not mourning them. I’m just saying it’s a mess.”
“That it is.” Drake hesitated, dizzy. “When you’re done with Allie, think you could do something about the scratch I got?”
Spencer sighed. “Gonna be a busy evening, I see.”
“Work on Allie first.”
Spencer nodded, glanced at her, and then back at Drake. “It’s gonna hurt, you know.”
“Yeah. I guessed.” He paused. “Maybe you can stitch up my head while you’re at it, too?” Drake was about to say something else, something important, when the sky spun and he blacked out. He never felt Spencer catch his shoulders as he fell back, keeping his battered skull from hitting the ground.
Chapter Forty
Spencer stood watch as Drake slept fitfully through the night, the half syringe of morphine having dulled the worst of the pain. The rain had started a few hours after dark and continued until morning. When Drake awoke and crawled stiffly out of the tent, Spencer was sitting with his plastic parka on, his back against a tree, water running off his hat as his eyes roved over the jungle.
“You wanna get some sleep while I keep watch for a few hours?” Drake asked. He took a long pull on his canteen, his throat parched, and looked over at Allie’s tent, which was set up next to his.
“I can sleep when I’m dead. How’s the leg?”
“I’ll manage. Thanks for doing that. And Allie?”
“All part of the platinum-level service I provide. You might want to take a day or two to let it heal.” Spencer stared without speaking for a moment at Allie’s tent. “She’ll make it. She got very lucky on the path the bullet took — it was messy, but ultimately didn’t do a ton of damage.”
“And a helicopter?”
“We need to talk about that. Right now, she’s sleeping, and there’s no point in waking her up. But once she comes to, I want to see how she’s doing. That will determine our next step.”
“In what way?”
“The second we contact the authorities for a helicopter, Paititi’s blown. Assuming they’re even willing to come this far into the jungle, which isn’t a given. And there are going to be a lot of questions about gunshot wounds — questions we might not want to answer.”
“So…what? The answer is to risk her life so we can try to find the treasure?”
“Her life’s not at risk anymore is my point. But that brings up the big question: you got any ideas where it could be?” Spencer asked.
“Some.”
Spencer tossed Drake an energy bar. The rain eased as they sat together munching on yet another dry breakfast, silent. Drake’s head was splitting and his leg felt like someone had taken a hot poker to it, but he was alive. They heard a stirring from Allie’s tent, and both rose and approached it.
Allie looked pale and weak, but her eyes were open, though foggy from the morphine. Spencer had fashioned a bandage from one of his clean shirts and the gauze from the first aid kit, and as she tried to sit up, she reached for it, wincing.
“God, this hurts,” she said as Drake climbed into the tent and handed her a full canteen. She drank from it greedily and then lay back. “What happened?”
“We got all the bad guys. And Spencer did a little emergency surgery on both of us,” Drake said. “How do you feel?”
“Like a truck ran over me.”
Spencer ducked his head into the tent. “Any fever? Shakes?”
“No, just really weak.”
“That’s because of the blood loss. You’ll feel stronger as the day goes on. But you need to eat something, and drink plenty.” Spencer tossed Drake two breakfast bars, and Allie reluctantly ate them as he summarized their situation and options.
“So there’s no danger from the wound?” Allie asked, finishing the second bar.
Spencer shook his head. “Nothing immediate. You’re on a high-dose antibiotic that’ll control infection, which is the biggest danger.”
“Then I vote we find the treasure before calling for help,” she said, her voice stronger.
“That’s not such a hot idea,” Drake said.
“We didn’t come all this way just to hand the location to the Peruvians. We need to locate the treasure, or this will have all been in vain,” she countered.
Drake shook his head. “Allie, some things might be worth risking your life for. But this isn’t one of them. We found the city. That’s already a huge win.”
“You heard Spencer. I’ll make it. You just need to get busy and locate the treasure.” She closed her eyes again and smiled. “Slackers.”
After a few more minutes of back and forth, Allie terminated the debate, threatening to crawl off into the jungle if they called for help before they’d located the Inca gold. Spencer went into the brush and emerged with a branch for Drake to use as a staff. After a short discussion about the dangers involved in leaving the tents pitched with Allie waiting by herself, they agreed that she’d keep one of the pistols, for the unlikely event a native appeared to challenge her.
“Anything shows up, shoot it,” Spencer said, handing her the gun.
“I kind of got that. Thanks.”
“You sure you’re going to be okay?” Drake asked, eyeing her skeptically.
“Go on. Get out of here. Make us all rich. I’ll be fine,” she said, her blue eyes flashing at him.
Drake backed out of the tent and looked around the clearing and, after hoisting his backpack, set off with Spencer to hunt for the treasure.
“What are we looking for?” Spencer asked.
“I’ll know it when I see it.”
Spencer gave him a sidelong glance. “You’re kind of grumpy after getting shot and brained, you know that?”
“It’ll do that to you.”
Drake limped, supporting himself on the branch, and he realized as they walked through the ruins of the sprawling city that Spencer must have carried Allie and him after tending to their wounds and setting up the tents.
Although it pained Drake to admit it, it occurred to him that he’d misjudged Spencer. Those weren’t the actions of a traitor.
They took their time walking what had at one time been wide boulevards. The temples on either side of them were now eroded lumps of vegetation, most of the structures having been built out of timber that had long ago rotted away. Drake’s leg ached, but when Spencer had shown him how to change the dressing, there had been no sign of infection, and he’d gulped down several more antibiotic pills and injected a quarter of the morphine in the syringe before getting underway.