bullet holes you’ve left in the place might give it away,’ Nina said scathingly. ‘And all the gear you’ve left behind - as well as Flat Stanley there.’ She nodded towards the gory spot where the luckless soldier had been squashed beneath the sun disc.
‘I will send more men to collect them later,’ the general replied as he started for the gate, signalling his men to bring the explorers. Becker was half carried, half dragged by two soldiers. ‘And a bullet hole is a bullet hole. Anyone could have made them at any time. But the bodies of archaeologists known to be in the country on a particular date . . . that would be harder to explain if they were found here.’ A sadistic hardness entered his voice. ‘But where you are going, you will never be found.’
Despite her outward defiance, a chill of fear ran through Nina’s soul.
Eddie climbed back up the outer wall where he had first entered the city, warily surveying the buildings below before scrambling down the ruined stairway and heading for the plaza. He was on full alert, certain that Callas’s men would be searching for him - which made the absence of any guards all the more disconcerting as he crept through the alleys.
He peered over a wall at the plaza. Nobody was there. The soldiers, Callas and Stikes were gone. So were Nina and the other expedition members.
And the sun disc.
Callas had what he came for – the golden god-image had been taken away by the helicopter. He vaulted the wall and hurried across the plaza. Tracks in the dirt led to the main gate - and the smaller prints of women’s boots amongst them showed that Nina, Macy and Loretta were still alive. Callas presumably had some reason for not wanting their bodies to be found at Paititi, but Eddie was certain that he still intended to kill them. He would be taking them somewhere he could be sure they wouldn’t be found. Where?
The military base. A restricted area in the depths of the jungle, what few visitors it might get deterred by barbed wire and bullets. Once Nina and the others entered, they would never leave.
He ran for the gate. As he cleared the ancient walls, he heard something over the noise of birds and insects: a low grumble. Engines.
Receding. The trucks were already heading away down the logging track.
‘Shit!’ He stopped, forcing back his anger, trying to think. There was only one road, and it took a long and circuitous route back to Valverde and the spur leading to the base. It would take a couple of hours for Callas’s convoy to get there. The base itself was about five miles to the northwest . . .
Eddie already knew there was only one course of action he could take.
He raised his wrist, turning in place until the hour hand of his watch pointed at the sun. South, he knew from his military training, was exactly halfway between the hour hand and the twelve o’clock position on the watch face. With that established, it only took a moment to work out which way was northwest. One last look after the vehicles carrying his wife and friends, then he set off at a run into the trees.
14
The bumpy drive from the ruins took two hours, Nina and the others sweating in the back of the troop truck. Ahead and behind it were the Land Cruisers. Kit and Valero looked after Becker, while Macy tried, with limited success, to comfort the weeping, terrified Loretta. Nina’s fleeting thoughts of leaping over the tailgate to escape into the jungle were tempered by the AK-103s pointed at her companions – and the presence of Cuff’s body. Loretta’s hysteria at the sight had forced the soldiers to cover it, but the huddled shape was a constant reminder of Callas’s ruthlessness.
She knew he would display that trait again soon enough. The general’s greed had convinced him to keep her alive – for the moment – in the hope she could lead him to even greater riches . . . but he had no cause to spare the others. They had witnessed his plundering of Paititi, something he wanted to keep secret even after successfully completing his ‘operation’.
They would have to be silenced.
The little convoy turned off the road to Valverde on to a narrower, even rougher track. A warning sign read Prohibida La Entrada: Zona Militar. Callas’s domain, a private kingdom. Here, he could do whatever he