Matthew Reilly - Temple

The lower level was still largely intact, but completely overgrown with weeds. A large door stone sat at an odd angle inside the building’s main entranceway.

Aside from the citadel, there was one other dominant feature of the village.

The town of Vilcafor was surrounded by a huge dried-up moat—an enormous horseshoe-shaped ditch that ran around the entire town, starting at the riverbank and ending at the riverbank. Two great stone dikes prevented the water in the river from rushing into the moat.

It must have been at least fifteen feet across and just as deep. Tangled thorny thickets of brush snaked their way along its waterless base. Two old wooden logbridges spanned its width on either side of the village. Like the rest of the town, they too had been overcome by the encroaching rainforest. Their wooden beams were laced with sprawling green vines.

Race stood motionless at the end of the old Incan street, the pouring rain running off the brim of his cap.

He felt like he was entering another world.

An ancient world.

A dangerous world.

‘Don’t stay near the water too long,’ Lauren said as she strode past him.

Race turned, not understanding. Lauren clicked on her flashlight and pointed it at the river behind him.

It was as if someone had just flicked on a light switch.

Race saw them instantly. Glinting in the light of Lauren’s flashlight.

Eyes.

No less than fifty pairs of eyes, protruding from the inky black water, stared back at him from the rain spattered surface of the river.

He turned quickly to Lauren. ‘Alligators?’

‘No,” Walter Chambers said, coming over. “Melanosuchus niger. Black caimans. Largest crocodilian on the continent.

Some say the largest in the world. They’re bigger than any alligator, and in biology more like a crocodile. In fact, the black caiman is a close relative of Crocodylus porosus, the giant Australian saltwater crocodile.’

‘How big are they?’ Race asked. He could only see the eerie constellation of eyes before him. He couldn’t tell how big the reptiles in the water actually were.

‘About twenty-two feet,’ Chambers said cheerfully.

‘Twenty-two feet.’ Race did the calculations in his head.

Twenty-two feet equalled seven metres.

‘How much do they weigh?’ he asked.

‘About 2300 pounds. What’s that, about a thousand kilograms.’

A thousand kilograms, Race thought. A metric ton.

Wonderful.

The caimans in the darkened river began to rise in the water and Race saw their armoured crocodilian backs, saw the pointed plates of their tails.

They looked like dark mounds just hovering in the water.

Great big massive mounds.

‘They’re not going to come out of the water, are they?’

‘They might,’ Chambers said. ‘But probably not. Most crocodilians prefer to grab their victims by surprise at the water’s edge, from the cover of the water itself. And although black caimans are night hunters, they rarely stray out of the water in the evening, for the simple reason that it’s too cold. Like all reptiles they have to watch their body temperature.’

Race stepped away from the water’s edge.

‘Black caimans,’ he said. ‘Great.’

Frank Nash stood at the end of the main street of Vilcafor with his arms folded across his chest, alone. He just stared intently at the decrepit old village before him.

Troy Copeland appeared at his side. ‘Sebastian just called from Cuzco. Romano just went through the airport there. He arrived in a Globemaster under Tomcat escort. He then liaised with a few choppers and headed off in this direction.’

‘What sort of choppers?”

‘Super Stallions. Three of them.’

‘Christ,’ Nash said. A fully-loaded CH-53E Super Stallion could carry up to 55 fully-armed troops. And they had three of them. So, Romano had brought firepower, too.

‘How long did it take us to get here from Cuzco?’ Nash asked quickly.

‘About two hours and forty minutes,’ Copeland said.

Nash looked at his watch.

It was 7:45 pm.

‘They’ll be quicker in Stallions,’ he said, ‘if they follow the totems correctly. We have to move fast. I’d say we’ve got about two hours before they get here.’

The six Green Berets began hauling the Samsonite trunks out of the choppers and onto the main street of Vilcafor.

Nash, Lauren and Copeland started opening them up at once, revealing a cache of hightech equipment inside— Hexium laptop computers, infrared telescopic lenses and some very futuristic-looking stainless-steel canisters.

The two academics, Chambers and Lopez, were off in the village proper, eagerly examining the citadel and its surrounding structures.

Race—-now cloaked in a green Army parka to protect him against the rain—went over to help the Green Berets unload the choppers.

He got to the riverbank to find Buzz Cochrane addressing the youngest member of their team, a fresh-faced corporal named Douglas Kennedy.

Sergeant Van Lewen and the Green Berets’ leader, Captain Scott, were nowhere to be seen.

‘I mean, honestly, Doogie, could she be any more out of your league?’ Cochrane was saying.

‘I don’t know about that, Buzz,’ one of the other commandos said. ‘I reckon he should ask her out.’

‘What a great idea,’ Cochrane said, turning to Kennedy.

‘Shut up, you guys,’ Doug Kennedy said in a broad Southern accent.

‘No, seriously, Doogie, why don’t you just walk on up to her and ask her out?’

‘I said, shut up,’ Kennedy said as he heaved a Samsonite container out of one of the Hueys.

Douglas Kennedy was twenty-three, lean, and handsome in a boyish kind of way, with earnest green eyes and fully shaved head. He was also about as green as they came. His nickname ‘Doogie’ was a reference to the clean-cut and honest nature of the lead character in the old TV show, Doogie Howser MD, with whom it was said Doogie shared many characteristics. It was also a “clumsy’ kind of name, suggesting some sort of innocence, which made it all the more appropriate for Doogie. He was particularly shy—and especially clumsy when it came to women.

‘What’s going on?’ Race said as he arrived next to them.

Cochrane turned—looked Race up and down instantly— then turned away as he said, “Oh, we just caught Doogie here staring at that pretty young archaeologist over there, and we was just giving him a friendly ribbing.’

Race spun and saw Gaby Lopez, the team’s archaeologist, standing over by the citadel with Walter Chambers.

She was certainly very pretty. She had dark hair, a beautiful Latin complexion and a compact curvaceous body. At twenty-seven, so Race had heard, she was the youngest Associate Professor in the Department of Archaeology at Princeton. Gaby Lopez was a very intelligent young woman.

Race shrugged inwardly. Doogie Kennedy could do a lot worse.

Cochrane slapped Doogie heartily hard on the back, spat out a gob of tobacco.

‘Don’t you worry, son. We’ll make a man out of you yet.

I mean, take a look at young Chucky over there,’ Cochrane said, indicating the next-youngest member of the unit, a beefy moon-faced 23-year-old corporal named Charles

‘Chucky’ Wilson. ‘Why, only last week Chucky became a fully fledged member of the 80s Club.”

‘What’s the 80s Club?’ Doogie asked, perplexed.

‘It’s tasty, that’s what it is,’ Cochrane said, licking his lips.

‘Ain’t that right, Chucky?’

‘Sure is, Buzz.’

‘Apples, man,’ Cochrane grinned.

‘Apples,’ Chucky replied, smiling.

As the two soldiers laughed, Race eyed Cochrane cautiously, mindful of what the Green Beret had said on the plane when he had thought Race was out of earshot.