Spencer glowered at his back as he disappeared into the brush, and with a groan and a glance at Allie’s tent, followed him, wondering what had just clicked in Drake’s head.
Chapter Forty-One
Drake approached the altar area, his gun in one hand and the staff in the other, and slowly turned to study the topography. The bodies had disappeared, either dragged away by Spencer to avoid attracting larger predators or taken by the jungle’s hungry to be feasted on in private. He limped to the altar and gazed at the stone surface, the blood washed away by the prior night’s rain. On it was a lateral line he’d believed had been a channel for blood, but which now appeared to be pointing across the clearing to a rise in the terrain, a bulge that jutted from the vegetation like a massive tumor.
Spencer edged to his side and followed his stare to settle on the outcropping. “What is it?” he whispered.
“My father speculated in the journal that the Incas wouldn’t have just left their treasure exposed, where it could be easily found. And something about what Palenko said, that it was beneath our feet…”
“You think they buried it? That’ll take forever to locate.”
“Maybe. But what if…come on. Do you have your flashlight?” Drake limped to the rise a hundred yards away, its bulk growing as he neared it. Palm trees dotted its base, their trunks contorted in impossible directions as they sought elusive sunlight.
When they arrived at the bottom of the small hill, the stone reddish brown where it wasn’t covered with creepers and plants, Drake began probing around the base with his staff, thrusting it into the brush like a man possessed.
“What are you doing?” Spencer asked, doubt in his voice.
“Looking for something that doesn’t belong here. That isn’t natural.”
“Sure. Like what?”
“I don’t know, but—”
Drake stopped and thrust the staff again, and heard the same sound.
Something hollow behind the plants.
“Let’s get to work. Still plenty of light out,” Drake said, unsheathing his machete from its place on his backpack frame.
Ten minutes later they’d cleared a six-foot space where they could see the underlying rock. Drake tapped one area with his machete blade and began scratching the dirt from the surface. A crudely built wall emerged, the mortar crumbling as the steel scraped at it, and Spencer joined him working at the joints in the rock — river rock, not the iron-rich ore that formed the outcropping.
After half an hour, the first of the stones fell into an empty space behind the wall, and Spencer renewed his efforts as Drake took a break, still not fully recovered from the prior day’s blood loss. A second rock tumbled into the cavity, followed by a third and fourth, and Spencer stood back, studying the dark hole he’d bored.
“Looks like a cave to me,” he said.
Drake offered a pained grin. “That’s what we’re looking for. How much longer you figure till it gets dark?”
“Maybe two hours.”
“Plenty of time,” Drake said, pulling his flashlight from his pack and turning it on. Spencer did the same and then invited Drake to lead the way.
“This is your dance. I’m just the window dressing.”
Drake’s calf flared pain as he climbed through the gap and stood in the cavern, the mouth no more than six feet high and ten wide. He took several cautious steps, playing his beam over the stone floor, which dropped below ground level as far as he could see. Spencer stepped in behind him. His boots scraped on the chunks of mortar and rock as he directed his light at the ceiling.
“Looks like plenty of bats, so there’s got to be another entrance,” he whispered.
Squeaking greeted his comment, and then the entire cavern seemed to come alive as the air thickened with hundreds of furry bodies beating tiny wings, screeching as they headed for the new exit. Drake ducked and covered his head as the swarm fluttered over and around him. Spencer did the same, the frenzied squeaks building to a crescendo and then fading as the bats departed, leaving them open-mouthed and shaken.
“You did say there were plenty of them,” Drake said dryly. He took a tentative step farther into the chasm’s gloom. Spencer moved to his side, and their combined lights glowed off the cave walls.
“Feel the temperature change? It’s cooler already.”
“At least that’s a relief. I wonder if there are snakes in here?” Drake asked.
“I think we have to assume the worst.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
The area expanded as they traversed the sloping floor. The narrow passage became a large cave with a ceiling at least twenty feet high. Spencer grabbed Drake’s arm and leaned into him, pointing at a far wall, his light moving across the stone.
Pictographs adorned the space, carvings of deities and dignitaries in elaborate gowns and headdresses, riding on carts pulled by jaguars and mythical beasts. In the background, atop a hill framed by two waterfalls, a huge form, part feline, part human, spread its arms heavenward, where an oversized, stylized sun beamed down on the procession.
Drake nudged him and moved forward to where a different scene depicted Inca warriors battling caricatures of bearded men with armor, bodies on both sides piled up, decapitated and otherwise mutilated. His light seemed inadequate to highlight all the carvings, which stretched to the ceiling — a graphical history of the Incas.
“Look at this,” Spencer whispered from another wall. Drake made his way to him, where he was staring at a carving of a large gathering of men and women standing around a lake. A deity hovered over it, arms filled with icons and jewels.
“That could be El Dorado. The legend of the golden man,” Drake said, his voice hushed. He directed his light at the mouth of a dark opening on the far side of the chamber, the squeak of an occasional bat reminding them that they weren’t alone. Water dripped somewhere in the distance, wearing away at the stone as it had for eons to create the cavern. They approached the gap and stopped short at the final image carved into the wall — a grinning skull atop a robed figure, which clutched a snake in one bony hand and a war club in the other.
“Not much of a welcome committee, is it?” Spencer said.
“You can take the point position anytime you want.”
“This is your movie. Lead on, Dr. Livingston.”
Drake moved forward into the new cave and a low moan greeted him from its bowels. His flashlight beam flashed on the floor in front of him, and he hesitated as a large white scorpion faced him, tail raised, its pincers opening and closing furiously, clearly annoyed at having been disturbed. Drake sensed Spencer behind him, but kept his eyes locked on the creature, mesmerized by its menacing dance.
He jumped when Spencer tapped his arm and whispered in his ear.
“Looks like we found the cemetery.”
Drake raised his beam from the creature and slowly played it over the wall, where hundreds of skulls leered at him. Spencer turned slowly, taking in the countless skeletons in the burial vault, and stopped where the oily brown exoskeleton of a centipede was worming through the eyehole of a skull with a feathered helmet on it.
“Okay. This is officially really creepy,” Drake murmured, and returned his attention to the floor, where the scorpion had scuttled off into the recesses of the massive crypt.
“Agreed. Although the good part is that they’re dead, so they don’t pose much of a threat. I could take ten of ’em with one arm tied behind my back,” Spencer said.
The moaning sound echoed through the cave again, and Drake pointed his light at the ceiling. “Wind’s blowing somewhere above us.”
“Probably where the bats get in.”