Gus paused, and when he spoke, Drake could have sworn there was a smile in his voice.
“Done. Here’s a number. Call me once you’ve verified the funds. I’ll arrange for a helicopter. And leave the sniper at home.” He rattled off a U.S. number, and Drake repeated it back to him.
“How long will it take?” Drake asked.
“A few hours.”
“Fair enough. Oh, and forget about triangulating this phone. I’m nowhere near the ore. If the money’s not there by the end of the day, I’ll assume you double-crossed me, and you can spend the rest of your life looking for it.”
“That won’t happen.”
“Make sure it doesn’t.”
Drake shut the phone off, then pulled the battery and put it in his pocket. Spencer looked at him with new respect.
“They went for it?”
“Just like you said. Although I would have given it to them for free.”
“I know. But that’s not how these guys work. If you don’t make them pay, they start thinking maybe you’re holding out on them. That’s just the way they are. They’re slippery, so they assume everyone else has an angle, too. Now they believe yours is money, and they’ll like that, because they understand it, and money’s nothing to them. They make a phone call, a bank somewhere with an operational account does a wire, and that’s it. There’s plenty more where that came from, and a hundred million won’t even get you a decent jet fighter, so in the scheme of things, it’s chump change. You could have asked for a billion, but then they might have had trouble doing the deal quickly.”
“A hundred million’s not chump change to me.”
“Me either. Partner. Remember, thirty-three of it’s mine.”
“Only if you help me drag this thing along the river until we find a clearing.”
“That’s a tough one. Thirty-three mil for an hour’s work…”
“I thought you’d see my side of it.”
Drake and Spencer improvised a sled for the container using two saplings and one of the backpacks, and spent the remainder of the afternoon lugging the ore down the river to a small area of beach a half mile away. It started raining as they arrived, and they slid the box into the backpack and zipped it closed. Drake entered a waypoint into Jack’s portable GPS and they made their way back to Paititi, the rain having already erased most of the sled tracks.
The phone was blinking a low-battery indicator when Spencer called Jorge and gave him the coordinates for the city. The next call to the international operator got the bank’s phone number, and after one minute on hold Drake confirmed that the money had hit.
When Drake called Gus back, the phone was beeping every twenty seconds to alert him that it was about to shut down. He gave Gus the location, wished him well, and then the phone went dead in his hand. Drake tossed it to Spencer, who dropped it into his backpack and grinned at Drake.
“Fish for dinner? It’s on me.”
Chapter Forty-Four
The Sikorsky helicopter’s huge blades beat at the air like a jilted bride as it hovered over the clearing, the surrounding trees shaking from the downdraft. The winch operator leaned out the door as he lowered the final wooden crate through the canopy at the end of a steel cable. The container set down next to five of its twins, and two workers ran to it and disconnected a large hook from the harness. The other fourteen men stood in a loose ring around the boxes, watching the display while Jorge chatted with Spencer and Drake near the cavern mouth.
Six hours later Allie had been airlifted to a military hospital, the area quiet except for the footsteps of the armed men guarding the perimeter. Deep inside the cave, a generator powered oversized work lights in the sinkhole chamber as the first of the divers lowered himself down a rope ladder to the water’s surface, lights on either shoulder mounted to his buoyancy control vest. A second joined him and, after several seconds, dropped into the inky pool. When they slipped beneath the surface, the hush of the surroundings seemed to weigh heavier on the gathered men — Jorge, Spencer and Drake, and four archeologists from Lima who had accompanied the multinational team.
“There will be another dozen divers arriving tomorrow. The military’s flying them in. Sorry about the soldiers everywhere, but it’s a necessity. We don’t want one of the cartels thinking about grabbing an easy payday,” Jorge said, explaining the two dozen heavily armed Peruvian Special Forces commandos, who had arrived shortly after the scientists and immediately mounted armed patrols.
“That seems prudent. Better them than the alternative,” Drake said, thinking about the CIA.
“The mass burial site is stunning. This is an unprecedented opportunity to study every aspect of a functioning Inca city’s society. So much was eradicated by the Spanish that almost all of our understanding of Inca civilization is based on fragments and hearsay. And of course, the reports that the clergy created — the codices that purport to tell about the Inca Empire.”
Spencer shook his head. “As you said earlier, those are highly questionable. Likely a great deal of distortion based on bias and inaccuracies.”
“Yes, but now we have thousands of skeletons, and each is a kind of historical record that will offer invaluable information on everything from diet, to medicine, to life expectancy…and that’s not even counting what we could encounter once we begin excavation of the ruins.” Jorge paused. “This is the most important single find in our history, for that reason alone. Never mind the Inca treasure, although that will certainly also afford unique insights into the culture.”
Drake shook his head as if to clear it. “It was my father’s dream to find Paititi. I’m humbled I could fulfill his ambition.”
Jorge nodded. “I’d say you more than did so. You’ll be quite famous before long. I’m green with envy, actually. And thrilled to be working with you.”
A radio crackled, and one of the scientists lowered a huge steel basket into the water, suspended on a cable hanging from a portable crane that had been assembled and secured in place on the rim after the archeologists had photographed the stunning emerald ring and painstakingly cleared a section for the workers, laying down plywood for protection. The radio emitted a burst of static and the crane operator engaged a lever. The high-pitched whine of an electric motor filled the chamber, and the conversation ebbed as everyone waited to see what would emerge from the depths.
The cage broke the surface and the lights glinted off a huge gold ornamental headdress, easily four feet tall by six wide, ornately crafted and stunning. Emeralds the size of tennis balls adorned the crest, and Drake could hear a collective gasp from the assembly.
“My…God…it’s incredible,” Jorge whispered as the crane swung slowly and three men reached out to guide the basket to a position on the cave floor. Cameras flashed, memorializing the amazing find, and it took all three of them to remove it.
Spencer, Drake, and Jorge approached the relic as the crane operator moved the basket back over the pool and lowered it back into the water. Jorge reached out with a tentative hand and touched the glistening surface of an emerald in obvious awe.
The archeologist with the radio walked over as more pictures were taken and leaned into Jorge. After a brief discussion, Jorge nodded and returned his attention to Drake and Spencer.
“The divers say that the entire bottom is filled with artifacts, and that we’ll need more equipment to get some of it out. They spotted part of the legendary Lost Chain of Huayna Capac, and that alone will require a larger crane. This…I can’t describe to you what this means to our country,” Jorge said, his eyes gleaming in the bright glare of the work lights. Unable to contain himself, he hugged Drake, who looked at Spencer out of the corner of his eye as he endured the embrace, obviously uncomfortable.