‘She’s going to retrieve the remains that she’s looking for,’ Ethan explained. ‘They’re not here in this temple.’
‘Then what the hell are we doing here?’
‘Hold the line!’ Ethan shouted as the sound of gunfire intensified. ‘On my mark, we take out the Russian’s backs, okay?’
Lopez nodded as they huddled near the temple entrance, gunfire raking the stones and steps outside as Ethan waited until it sounded as though the Russians were almost upon them.
Ethan stepped out and aimed down the steps at the men running up toward them just as Lopez poked her head out alongside him and they fired together. The twin muzzle flashes of the two rifles flared brilliantly in the darkness and illuminated the surprised and horrified faces of six Russians charging up toward them.
Ethan heard a brutal and rapid thump-thump-thump as the bullets impacted into the Russian’s bodies and they were hurled backwards to tumble down the steps or toppled over the edge and plunged down onto the plaza below.
The remaining Russians fled the steps and hurled themselves down behind the Artisan’s Wall as they sought an escape from the lethal crossfire.
‘The STS men are moving in!’ Lopez yelled.
Ethan saw the elite American troops now advancing by sections across the plaza, four men moving forward at a run while being covered by their comrades from behind. The four running men sprinted ten yards and then dropped into prone positions and opened fire as the four behind leaped up and ran forward under the fresh covering fire.
‘We’ve got to flank them and get out of here!’ he yelled to Lopez.
‘And go where?!’ she yelled back. ‘There’s nowhere to go but down and we won’t be able to sneak past the STS men! They’ll pick us off easily!’
Ethan flinched as a few wild rounds smashed into the stone wall behind which he hid, and in the distance he saw the vehicles the Russian’s had used to climb the mountain, their headlamps still illuminating the visitor’s centre through the trees beyond the plaza and the cultivation terraces on the mountain’s southern flank.
‘You need to get to those vehicles and make sure nobody else can follow you!’
Lopez nodded as she looked at the visitor’s centre and then fired off two rounds at the cornered Russians nearby.
‘What about you?’
‘They’ll have to finish off the Russians first,’ Ethan shouted back above the gunfire as he ducked back into cover. ‘Get Jarvis and his guys off the hill. If you can make it to the Temple of the Condor, you can get around behind them and the Americans and reach the main tourist trail. I’ll go after Lucy.’
‘If the Americans catch us we’ll be slaughtered!’ Lopez protested as she fired off another couple of rounds down at the Russians.
Ethan shook his head as he looked at the steadily brightening sky. ‘Neither the Russians or the Americans should legally be here. They’ll have to pull out before the tourists and armed guards arrive. This will all be over by sunrise.’
‘Fine!’ Lopez yelled back. ‘I’ll just fetch my magic goddamned carpet!’
Ethan looked at the gardens and the plunging cliffs behind the Temple of the Condor. ‘Don’t take the normal path across.’ He looked over his shoulder at Jarvis and his men. ‘I hope you three are all okay with heights!’
Ethan saw the American troops advancing on the Russians’ position, knowing that they were also cutting Ethan and his companions off from their escape by doing so.
The STS troops had crossed the plaza but were pinned down by the weight of the Russians’ firepower. Even though they were highly trained and disciplined, they were outnumbered three to one: they either would be forced to charge the Russians to end the fire fight, or retreat to fight another day.
Suddenly, the STS troops broke ranks and charged across the plaza, firing indiscriminately as they rushed to overwhelm the Russian position. Fully occupied with hunting down their armed adversaries, Ethan knew that this was their only chance to slip away.
Ethan turned back to Lopez. ‘This is it! Get to the main road and get down off the mountain. I’ll meet you in Cusco! Go, now, I’ll cover you!’
Lopez, Jarvis and the two escorts got to their feet and Lopez led them to the entrance of the temple. The stone steps were now devoid of Russians, who had pulled back and were crouched in groups in alleys all around the Artisan’s Wall almost a hundred yards away as they fired desperately on the charging Americans.
Ethan turned and fired off a full clip at both the Russians and the STS as Lopez, Jarvis and his escort hurried out of the temple and turned right, away from the steps toward the warren of alleys that descended the eastern slopes of the city and the mountain.
The AK-47 shuddered into silence in his grip as its clip emptied, and Ethan hurled the weapon to one side and made sure that Lopez and the others were away and clear. He glanced back into the temple as an idea crossed his mind, and he worked hurriedly before he fled the temple toward Huayna Picchu.
The sound of distant gunfire echoed off the hills as Lucy laboured ever upward, virtually crawling up the stone steps and forcing herself to keep looking straight ahead and not to her right, where the faint light of dawn was illuminating ethereal veils of wispy cloud drifting over the Urabamba River eight thousand feet below the sheer face of the mountain.
Lucy had taken the lower slopes at a run, climbing the winding track between the forests, sprinting as though pursued by the gunfire that she could hear raging in the distance across the ancient citadel. She knew that it would not be long before Ethan and Lopez were overpowered by one faction or the other, and her pursuers would know that there was only one place she could have fled.
Against the dark sky rose the towering peak of Huayna Picchu, overlooking the vast citadel below it. Still clad in jungle growth and vines protruding from the rocky crags of the mountain’s peak, it stood more than a thousand feet higher than its more famous companion remains, closer to the sky. Closer to the Gods.
Lucy crawled ever upwards, through tiny fissures in the rock face and across narrow ledges that overlooked the dizzying depths below and were so precarious that she was forced to crawl across them on her hands and knees just as Hiram Bingham had once done a century before her. Her breath sawed in her throat and her pace slowed as she laboured upward, driven forward only by the knowledge that somewhere half a world away a little girl might live if Lucy could overcome her exhaustion and fear and reach the summit.
The mountainside fell away to one side of the track, a sheer face that descended deep into the gorges far below. Wreaths of cloud hung like phantoms on the cold air around her as she climbed, her balance wavering with dizziness in the thin air as she laboured up the narrow track until finally she emerged, crawling once more, onto a narrow summit marked by a battered old wooden sign.
Lucy got to her feet and sucked in great breaths of air in an attempt to recover herself as she leaned against the sign and looked at the mountain peak before her. Enshrouded in dense foliage, the far side of the peak dropped away to reveal steep terraces and a series of crumbling stone temples clinging to the precipitous side of the mountain.
Lucy staggered across to the stone steps that led down toward the buildings and then suddenly her courage failed her as she reached the edge. The track was barely two feet wide, built from loose stone that descended alongside a stone wall to her left. To her right was literally nothing but an eight thousand foot fall down the sheer wall of the mountain toward the river far, far below. An updraft of wind billowed toward her from the plunging chasm and threatened to drag her off into oblivion.