Burial Ground

III

Laguna Pomacochas

Pomacochas, Peru

6:25 a.m.

Sam sat on the blonde sands of the shore and watched the sun rise across the rolling blue lake. The crescent ball of celestial fire seemed to set the gentle waves ablaze in a stunning showcase of oranges and yellows. She had nearly forgotten how beautiful this area of the world truly was. The smell of dew and exotic blossoms rather than exhaust and pavement; birdsong and the lapping of waves versus the grumble of traffic and airplanes; the crisp blue sky unfettered by the haze of pollution. She almost imagined she could see the thin rays radiating from the sun. Had it really been two years since she'd been here last? The bustle and demands of the university had swept her away, but it almost felt as though her heart had been here the entire time and now suddenly she was again whole, at peace with herself and the universe. She wished she could sit in this very spot forever, but there was a part of her that was raring to strike off into the mountains, where somewhere, hidden for centuries, lay the virgin ruins of the ancient civilization that had spawned the unique headdress, itself an amalgamous anomaly of cultural hybridization that should by no means even exist. The mystery of its origin was thrilling. Just thinking about it caused her heart to race.

She took a sip of the steaming guarana bean coffee and savored its bitter tang. This was one of the few perks of modern society she was going to miss in the weeks ahead. Boiling a handful of grounds over a fire served its purpose, but it just wasn't the same. Not by a long shot.

Draining the last of the brew, she rose from the sand and mounted the pier, accompanied by the hollow clump of her footsteps on the weathered planks. The two pilots were at the far end, unloading the gear from the cargo holds with less care than she would have liked. Some of those boxes contained sensitive electronic equipment: a ground-penetrating radar unit, a portable magnetometer, digging and grading utensils, cameras, sound gear, and a host of other goods they could never replace so many thousands of miles from home.

The dark-skinned pilot dropped a large duffel bag that made a crashing sound.

"Careful!" she shouted.

He looked up at her, shrugged, and muttered something under his breath. Her Spanish was a little rusty, but she recognized that he hadn't been apologizing. He turned away and went back to piling their belongings in an ugly heap that threatened to topple into the lake.

"If any of that stuff is broken---"

"You can take it out of my check," the other pilot said.

"That equipment is worth more than you make in a year."

"You'd be surprised what I make." The man offered a lopsided grin before resuming his task. "You could always help, you know."

"Sure. I'll do your job and then you can do mine. Think you can handle that?"

"So far all I've seen you doing is sitting on your duff drinking coffee. It might be rough, but I think I can swing it."

He was exasperating. She resisted the urge to stomp her feet in frustration and turned away. "Just try to be more careful," she called back over her shoulder.

If anything was broken, she'd do more than take it out of his check. She'd take it right out of his hide, and she'd revel in every second of it. Who did this guy think he was anyway? He was a pilot in the heart of the Amazonas Province, a washout who obviously couldn't cut the job back home in the States. And why was she allowing him to get to her anyway?

She glanced back only to find him still watching her with an amused expression. With considerable effort, she suppressed the urge to storm back down the pier and let him have a piece of her mind, and walked up the dirt road toward the hotel, where the others were already establishing a base of operations from which to launch their expedition.

An iron gate, flaking with rust, barred the thin walkway that separated the guest wing from the owner's abode. With a squeal of hinges, she opened it inward and passed into the courtyard. A flock of startled saffron finches exploded from the nests they'd chiseled into the building itself and swirled around the enclave. A rain of yellow and orange feathers and droplets of feces filled the air. She stayed safely beneath the overhang until she reached the first room, rapped a couple times with her knuckles, and entered.

Leo and the man who never left his side---Marcus Colton, if she remembered correctly---were still sitting at the small square table, poring over the stack of maps and conversing in hushed tones. Fat lot of good those fancy satellite maps would do them. The jungle grew and changed in unpredictable ways every single day, and it would determine their course, not the other way around. This region of the Western Andes had remained uncharted for a reason. No man was going to impose his will on the refined chaos that was the tropical cloud forest.

The flimsy door between the two rooms stood ajar. Beyond, the documentary director and her cameraman, neither of whom looked as though they'd been out of film school for more than a couple years, shared an animated conversation over steaming mugs and a platter of scrambled eggs dotted with red and green peppers. The four large men Leo had hired to carry their heavier equipment and act as her excavation crew lounged against the wall, seemingly reserving their energy for the journey ahead. They certainly weren't the graduate students with which she was accustomed to working. All four were in their late-twenties and appeared somehow hardened. In their hurry to catch the connecting flight from Lima to Chiclayo she had only been introduced in passing, but she believed she remembered their names. Nate Webber was the man on the end, shorter than the others, yet by no means small. He stood perhaps five-ten and had Hispanic dark eyes and skin, yet his shaggy hair was sun-lightened to a streaked auburn. Tad Morton sat beside him. He was taller and wirier, and reminded her of a farmboy with his sandy hair and freckles, but his brown eyes were sharp and always moving. Then there was Aaron Sorenson, a hulking, stereotypical Swede who could have passed for Dolph Lundgren from a distance, and Devin Rippeth, who immediately made her uncomfortable. His leathery skin was pock-scarred, his eyes a cold shade of blue. His head was shaved bald, but he had thick black eyebrows and a gruff goatee. What looked like the tail of a dragon curled around his neck from the tattoo beneath the collar of his T-shirt.

Knowing Leo, these men had been hired for more than their digging skills, but she wasn't about to complain. They needed to be prepared for anything. There were no hospitals or police in the unforgiving wilderness.

The final member of their party was conspicuously absent. She peered around one final time before slipping back out into the courtyard. He sat on the edge of the fountain, cold cup of coffee at his feet, his attention focused on his lap. She hadn't seen him when she originally entered, perhaps because he was sitting stone-still, the only movement his hands turning something over and over between them.

He looked up as she approached and gave her a weak smile, then returned his attention to his hands in his lap. As the only other academic here, she figured she should make an effort to get to know him. A cursory internet search had yielded a dozen articles and citations from the late-Eighties and early-Nineties. She'd been surprised to learn how similar their fields were, despite the subject matter. She had always pictured ornithologists as glorified hobbyists crouching in bushes with binoculars around their necks, but when it came right down to it, they were both scientists tracking the evolution of species over time.

"What's that?" she asked with a nod to the object in his hands. She sat down beside him on the lip of the tiled fountain.

He steadied it and held it up. It was a brown feather roughly the length of her palm with the faintest hint of green toward the end.

"I don't know. There are more than ten thousand species of birds in the world, just under a third of them in South America alone. Nearly every one of them is in one database or other, but this feather doesn't belong to any of them." He chuckled softly to himself. "That's the most exciting thing about it. Somewhere up there is a species that no one else has ever studied before, and I intend to be the first."