James Rollins - Excavation

Nearby, Sam tried his walkie-talkie. The radio still worked, but the static was a bit worse this much deeper. He let Philip know about their repositioning.

Once he was done, Maggie crossed to Sam. She wet her lips. “I’d like to borrow your ultraviolet lamp.”

“What for?”

“I want to go see what damage Gil and the others did to the dig.”

“I can’t let you go traipsing about on your own. We need to stick together.” He began to turn away.

She grabbed his shoulder. “It wasn’t a request, Sam. I’m going. It’ll only take a few minutes.”

Denal stood a few steps away. “I… I go with you, Miss Maggie.”

Sam faced them and seemed to recognize her determination. “Fine. But don’t be gone longer than fifteen minutes. We need to conserve our light sources, and I don’t want to be hunting you both down.”

Maggie nodded. “Thanks, Sam.”

“I’m coming with you two,” Norman said, snugging his camera around his shoulder.

Ralph also had a gleam of interest, but Sam squashed it. “The three of you go on. Ralph and I will go through this level with the flashlight and assess the structural integrity.” He dug his lamp out of his pocket and held it toward Maggie, but he did not release it without a final word of caution. “Fifteen minutes. Be careful.”

She heard the worry in his stern voice, and that dulled the annoyance in her own response. “I know, Sam,” she said softly, taking the Wood’s lamp from him. “You needn’t worry.”

He grinned, then returned to his walkie-talkie and ongoing argument with Philip.

Maggie clicked on the ultraviolet light and signaled for her two companions to follow her to the next ladder. As they abandoned the brighter light, the darkness of the temple wrapped close around them. Ahead, the purplish glow lit up the quartz in the granite blocks, creating a miniature starscape spreading down the passage. Maggie led them onward, the others sticking closer to her side.

As they traversed the series of ladders to the deepest level of the dig, Maggie’s heart began thudding louder and louder in her own ears. Soon her heartbeat seemed almost to be coming from beyond her chest.

“What’s that noise?” Norman asked as he stepped off the rung of the last ladder.

Denal answered, his voice a whisper. “I hear it before. After Señor Sala crawled through that doorway.”

Maggie realized the beating in her ears wasn’t her own heart but the external thudding of something deeper in the temple. It even reverberated through the stones under her feet.

“It sounds like a big clock ticking,” Norman said.

Maggie raised her light. “Let’s keep going.” Compared to the sonorous beat from below, her own voice sounded like the squeak of a mouse.

Winding past the last of the tunnels, Maggie soon stood before the violated doorway. Broken bolts marked where the seals had been shattered. In the dirt to the sides of the threshold, the three bands of etched hematite lay discarded, all of them cracked and chipped from the crowbar used to pry them loose. The offending tool still leaned against the wall.

Denal bent and picked up the crowbar, hefting it in his grip. He glanced to Maggie. She did not begrudge him a weapon.

The doorway ahead lay partially blocked by the toppled stone that had once sealed the section of the temple ahead. Norman knelt a couple spaces back from the opening. He nudged his glasses higher on his nose and tried to peer inside. “I can’t see anything.”

Maggie moved beside him. Neither seemed willing to draw closer to the door. She remembered the terror in Gil’s eyes and the bloody blistering across his cheek. What lay ahead?

Norman exchanged a glance with her. She shrugged and stepped forward, the lamp held before her like a pistol. She paused just at the edge of the doorway, then extended her arm through the threshold. The glow stretched down the throat of a short passage. The deep ticking sounded much louder there. Maggie spoke quietly. “There seems to be a large room just ahead. But the light doesn’t quite reach it.” She glanced over her shoulder back to Norman.

“Maybe we’d better wait for the others,” the photographer whispered.

Maggie was about to suggest exactly the same thing, but since Norman suggested it first, she now balked. She could picture Sam’s smug expression if she didn’t at least take a peek. They had wasted the battery of the Wood’s lamp to come this far; they should at least have something to show for the expenditure. “I’m going in,” she said, moving forward before fear slowed her. She would not be ruled by the paralyzing terror of her childhood.

“Then we’d better all go,” Norman said, closing in to crowd her rear as she began to crawl over the toppled stone door.

Maggie scrabbled over the obstruction and stood in the hall. Norman and Denal joined her. “Look,” she said, pointing her lamp. “There’s somethin’ ahead, reflecting back the glow.” Intrigued, she crept ahead slowly.

“Wait,” Norman said. “Let’s see what’s out there first.”

Maggie turned to see the photographer raise his camera.

“Don’t look at the flash directly,” he warned.

She swung back around just as the camera exploded for a briefest second. She gasped. After so long, such brightness stung. But her shocked response wasn’t all due to the pain. Blazed for just a fractured second, an image of the room had branded her retinas. “D… Did you see that?” she asked.

Denal mumbled something in his native tongue, clearly awed.

Norman coughed to clear his throat. “Gold and silver everywhere.”

Maggie raised her own light, its purplish glow now seeming so feeble. “And that statue… did you see it? It had to be at least two meters tall.”

Norman moved next to her as Maggie edged forward again. Denal kept to their side with his crowbar. Norman whispered, “Two meters. It couldn’t have been gold, too. Could it?”

Maggie shrugged. “When the Spanish first arrived here, they described the Temple of the Sun found in Cuzco. The Coriancha . The rooms were said to have been plated with thick slabs of gold and, in the innermost temple, stood a life-size model of a cornfield. Stalks, leaves, ears, even the dirt itself… all of gold.” By now, they had reached the room’s entrance. Maggie knelt down and ran a hand gently over the gold plate at her feet. “Amazing… we must have uncovered another Sun Temple.”

Norman stood still. “What’s that out there? Out on the floor.”

Maggie pushed back up. “What do you mean?”

He pointed to a dark shadow at the edge of her light’s reach. She raised her lamp. Its glow reflected across the gold and silver like moonlight spilling on a still pond. Some dark island lay out there, a ripple on the pond. Maggie began to step closer with her light, one foot on the edge of the metal floor.

Denal stopped her, holding his crowbar across her path. “No, Miss Maggie,” he murmured. “Smells wrong here.”

“He’s right,” Norman said. “What’s that reek?”

Now brought to her attention, Maggie noticed an underlying stench that penetrated through the cloying scent of wet clay and mold. She nodded to the camera. “Do it again, Norman.”

Nodding, the photographer raised his camera as Maggie turned her eyes back to the floor. The flash exploded out into the room. Maggie swore and stumbled away from the tiles. “Sweet Jesus!”

She covered her mouth. She had been staring at the dark island on the room’s floor when Norman’s flash had burst forth. The tortured face still blazed in her mind’s eye. The torn and twisted body, the eyes wide with death, and the blood… so much blood. Another body lay beyond the first, close to the far wall.