Operation: Amazon

- 6 -

The road was paved underfoot, six-foot square gray slabs, some cracked with age but for the most part in good enough condition to drive a cart along should it be required, although there was no sign that anyone had done so for many years. Banks watched the shadows amid the ruins, expecting an attack at any moment. None came. The only sound was once again the pad of their footsteps on stone, accompanied by the soft rush of water running away in the distance. He kept his goggles on his forehead. The sky was a shimmering blanket of stars overhead, with no moon to dim its brilliance, and with that, and the flickering light atop the pyramid showing them the way, there was more than enough light for their purposes.

They reached the base of the pyramid without anyone taking notice of them and looked up. The steps were each a foot or more high, and the structure was larger than it had looked from the other end of the causeway, stretching high above then toward the field of stars. Banks saw Wiggins eyeing the climb warily.

“Up you go, Wiggo,” he said. “Let’s see how far you get before you run out of puff.”

“That’s what the sarge’s wife says too,” the man replied and was climbing up and away before Hynd got a chance to reply. Banks let McCally and Hynd go ahead and brought up the rear as they headed up the steps.

It proved to be hard work and despite the fact it was cooler now than under the height of the sun, Banks still had a new film of sweat under his suit before they were even halfway to the top. At least here in the fresher air they were spared the worst of the biting insects and, as they rose higher, he got some idea as to why the pyramid and surrounding complex had been built where it was. The high vantage gave them a view over an endless swathe of forest, and the river, dark as pitch with highlights picked out by reflected stars, a vast snake slithering far below them.

When he stopped to draw a breath, he heard the cascade again, louder now, closer, off to his right on the far side of the pyramid somewhere. But there were no windows on this face of the structure. If their rescue were to be successful, they’d have to venture inside to find the man they’d come for. Banks felt the old tingle of anticipation rise in him, and after boating, canoeing and hiking all this way, he was about ready for any action that might come his way.

He turned and looked up the steps to where the flickering yellow light called them forward. The other three were already four steps higher, so Banks put some effort into it to catch up, and felt the strain in his calves. By the time he reached the top, one step behind the others, he was sweating again, and breathing heavily. Wiggins laughed.

“Who’s out of puff now, Cap?”

Banks smiled back.

“Just for that, you get to go first, Wiggo.”

They all turned toward the source of the flickering light. It was an open-arched entrance into 10 feet on a side cube that sat directly on the top of the pyramid. Three wall sconces, crude oil lamps, burned at eye height. They lit an altar that sat in the center of the room, and threw shadows across a passageway on the far side that appeared to lead away onto darkness.

A pale body lay on the altar, and Banks thought that their rescue was over before it really got started, but as he stepped in after Wiggins, he saw that it wasn’t the man they had seen on the video. It wasn’t Buller, but Wilkes had spoken of other men being taken, and Banks guessed this must be one of them, a beardless, thin chap, thinner still now due to his belly being open and his insides having been hollowed out. It hadn’t been done recently, for the blood was brown and crusted where it had run down the altar stone. The body was severely abused, in particular where the rib cage had been cracked and splayed. Banks didn’t look too closely, but that too appeared hollowed out, the body little more now than an empty shell where a man had been.

Somebody’s here all right. And they’ll pay for this butchery.

“What’s this now then?” Wiggins said. “Some kind of ancient torture shite?”

“Ritual, more like,” Hynd replied. “A sacrifice, I’d guess.”

“A sacrifice to what though?” Wiggins asked. “What kind of fucking god demands this kind of wet work as tribute?”

“Most kinds of fucking gods, in my experience,” Hynd replied and spat at the base of the altar. He turned to Banks.

“The guide might be right, you know? Our man might be dead already,” he said.

Banks was eyeing the dark corridor on the far side of the chamber. He pulled his goggles down over his eyes and stepped around the altar to the shadowed entranceway.

“Dead or alive, he’s coming back with us. I’ve had enough of this shite already. Let’s get this done. There’s beer back in the fridge on the dredger, and I’m getting awfy thirsty. Wiggo, you’re still up. Lead on.”

Wiggins led them into the dark.

They stood at the top of a long flight of stone stairs heading down. Banks visualized the pyramid and the hill in his mind, and realized this staircase must run down the far outside of a structure built on the edge of the hill.

And somewhere down there, I bet there’s a room, and a window, and our man.

All four of them wore the night goggles now, for there were no sconces on the walls here, no light source at all. Banks worried about the lack of resistance to their arrival. He expected to have met someone by now. But the corridor they descended into was narrow, and they had it covered front and rear. Any attack now was going to meet a rapid burst of fire from their rifles, enough to put anything short of an elephant down.

They descended fast, the steps taking them down in a steep, tight, spiral. They passed a window, little more than a slit in the rock at eye level, and heard the rush of water from outside again.

“We must be getting close,” Banks said softly. “Keep it tight, lads. It’s show time.”

One more flight of steps brought them to a landing with three roughly hewed doors on the outward side. Banks motioned, and McCally put his shoulder, hard, into the nearest one. The door fell in with a crash, and a pale figure on the ground under the window yelled in sudden fear and crawled quickly into the corner with his hands up, protecting his head. Banks saw his face before it was covered. It wasn’t Buller.

“We’re here to help,” McCally said, having to say it twice before the crouched, naked, man went quiet. The sudden lack of noise meant they could again hear the cascade outside, and the approach of running footsteps from somewhere above them.

“Wiggo, watch the stairs,” Banks said, and moved quickly to the middle door. Without being asked, Hynd went to the third one at the other end of the corridor. Banks counted down from three on his finger, then they both took out their door. Banks found a dead man, again not Buller, in the middle room.

“Got him!” Hynd shouted. By the time Banks got out to the corridor, Hynd had emerged with another naked man, one who could barely stand on his own and was having to be half-carried out of the cell. When he looked up, Banks recognized his face from the video message. McCally came out of the first room, half-carrying the first man who looked too weak to stand on his own. Somewhere above them, the sound of running feet on stone was getting closer.

“Up or down, Cap?” Hynd said.

Going back up meant a firefight, but they knew the way out; down was too much of an unknown.

“Up,” he said. “As fast as we can, and we go through anyone who gets in our way. Plugs in, lads. It’s going to get noisy in here.”

He addressed Hynd as all four of them shoved in the plastic plugs that protected their hearing from the worst of the impact of their shots.

“You and Cally bring these men as well as you can; Wiggo and I will plow the road.”

They headed for the stairs and reached then in time to see the first attacker’s lower body as he came down from above.