Up ahead Grant saw what the guy was heading for. The bridge had four maintenance cranes that jutted from small sheds. The sheds housed the equipment to lower the maintenance platform that dangled over the side like a window washer’s scaffold. The shed also encased the motor used to move the crane up and down the arch’s span. Each housing was pierced by a small tunnel over the walkway to let the tourist climbers pass through.
If the Russian could get to the closest of the cranes, he’d use the platform to lower himself to a walkway below and climb down one of the ladders to the vehicle deck. Given that there was only one scaffold, Grant would have no way to follow.
He wasn’t going to let that happen no matter what Morgan said.
He’d have one chance, when the man was getting onto the scaffold suspended from the crane’s wires. After that the man could train his full attention on shooting Grant, who would have to lean awkwardly over the side to have any kind of shot.
When the man got to the crane, he turned and fired some covering shots, and Grant went prone. The man was at the very limit of Grant’s range, and the odd geometry of the arch made the shot even tougher.
But this was Grant’s best opportunity. The gunman began climbing onto the hanging platform.
Grant fired. It hit. Right leg.
Bull’s-eye. Morgan would be proud.
The man reflexively grabbed his thigh, releasing his grip on the platform. His left foot, which was already planted on the platform, sent it swinging away from the bridge. He tried to regain his balance, but his feet were too far apart to recover. He scrabbled to grab hold of anything he could and came away clutching nothing but air.
With a terrified scream, the man plunged through the space between the bridge and platform. The sound didn’t stop until he smacked into the road below.
Grant got to his feet and leaned over the railing. Blood pooled around the head of the corpse. No way this one was going to talk.
Grant frowned at the mess. “Huh,” he said. “I really thought that would work.”
THIRTY-FIVE
It was when Tyler got to the astronaut drawing that Jess knew something was wrong.
As Fay explained to them, the astronaut figure depicted on the Nazca plain was one of the primary reasons that ancient alien theorists thought that spacemen had helped the Nazca people draw the lines. It was a simple humanoid with one armed raised and the other at its side. Although it had two legs, the head was round with the eyes being its only distinguishing features. Because the nose and mouth were missing, some thought it looked more like an alien creature than a human.
It seemed a stretch to Jess. To her it resembled a slightly more complicated stick figure. So what if the designers forgot to put the mouth on.
The astronaut drawing on the ceiling wasn’t the issue. There was a second one at the end of the story drawn on the walls. It was identical to the ceiling figure, except this one was drawn with a large round object in its raised right hand.
Tyler had taken out a small electronic device and was circling the room, waving it over the walls until he reached the astronaut drawing. He stopped, and a strange look crossed his face. He took the Leatherman from his belt and unfolded the knife. Fay yelped when she saw him dig into the lower hand of the astronaut with the blade.
“You’ll damage it!” Fay yelled.
“Sorry, Fay,” Tyler said, and pried at the etching until a stone divot fell from the wall.
When Jess’s flashlight passed across the resulting hole, a multi-hued glint reflected the light. It was about a tenth the diameter of the object in the raised hand, but this wasn’t drawn on. It was embedded in the wall.
Tyler checked his device’s display, and even in the dim light she could see his expression of alarm. He shouted toward the entrance.
“Polk, I’m going to need the case from the truck!” When he got an affirmative, he turned to Fay and Jess. “Let’s step to the other side of the chamber.
“Why?” Jess said. “What is that device?”
“It’s a radiation meter.”
Instead of retreating, Fay moved closer to the dime-sized object. “That’s radioactive?”
“Please, Fay, step back.”
“How dangerous is it?”
“We’ll be okay provided we don’t stay here too long.”
They moved to the opposite side.
“All right,” Jess said, “I think we deserve to know what’s going on.”
Tyler paused for a moment, then sighed. “Fay, can you turn off your video camera, please?”
Fay looked puzzled, but complied.
“I’m not supposed to tell you because it’s classified,” Tyler said, “but you’re right. You need to know the risks. What I’m about to say could send me to prison. You cannot under any circumstances talk about this with anyone else. Do you understand?”
She and Fay both nodded in bewilderment.
“The material embedded in the wall is called xenobium, a form of the element hafnium. We think the Nazca people found it after an explosion in their region. One of its properties is that it emits gamma radiation. I was hoping we wouldn’t find any, which was why I didn’t say anything until now.”
“That’s the reason Morgan Bell sent the Air Force jet to bring us here?” Jess asked. “This is related to the truck bomb in Australia, isn’t it?”
“In a way. They stole a weapon called the Killswitch. This material is the trigger that powers it. If the people who have the Killswitch got their hands on this, it could result in a devastating terrorist attack.”
They stayed to one side of the chamber until Polk called from the entrance that he had the case. Tyler ran out and came back carrying what looked like an aluminum suitcase, but by the way he was holding it, it seemed to be much heavier than Jess would have thought.
“Lead-lined case. Agent Bell gave it to us in the event that we found any xenobium.”
Tyler pried at the hole until the xenobium popped out and rolled across the floor.
“Put a light on it, but don’t touch it.”
Tyler used the pliers on his Leatherman to pluck the xenobium off the floor. Jess had a hard time believing that something the size of a pea could be lethal.
He put it inside the foam interior of the case and closed the lid. After another wave of the radiation meter, he declared that the gamma emissions were back down to a normal level.
Jess returned to look at the story on the wall and saw that it made perfect sense now.
“So the Nazca people found the xenobium,” she said, “but they didn’t realize it was deadly until those with extended exposure started to get sick and die. Why bring it here?”
“We may never know,” Fay said. “Perhaps they brought a small piece with them as an offering of thanks to the gods wherever they landed.”
Tyler pointed to the astronaut figure. “Look at his hands. This bit of xenobium was in his left hand. The right hand is raised holding with an object that is much bigger.”
“The drawing would imply that they left a larger piece behind somewhere in Nazca,” Jess said.
“Then we need to find it before anyone else does,” Tyler said, aiming his flashlight at the ceiling. “But where is it?”
Fay pointed at the Mandala geometric figure on the ceiling. “See the starburst in the center? It looks like the explosion is taking place there. It could be that the Nazca people saw the fireball come down from space, and when they went to investigate, they found the xenobium.”