Matthew Reilly - Temple

The two buttresses on Race’s side of the chasm were pit ted and worn but they looked sturdy beyond belief. And they looked old. Really, really old. Race had no doubt that they easily dated back to Incan times.

It was then that he saw the rope bridge itself.

It was hanging from the ledge on the other side of the chasm, the tower side. It hung vertically from the two but tresses on the far ledge so that it fell flat against the tower’s rocky wall. Attached to the bottom end of the rope bridge, however, was a long length of frayed yellow rope that drooped in a wide arc across the chasm, over to Race’s ledge, where it had been tied to one of the buttresses.

Walter Chambers examined the frayed yellow rope.

‘Dried grass rope. Interlocking braid formation. This is classic Incan rope construction. It was said that a whole Incan town, working together, could build an entire rope bridge in three days. The women picked the grass and braided it into long thin lengths of string. Then the men braided those lengths of string into thicker, more sturdy segments of rope like this.’

‘But a rope bridge couldn’t possibly survive the elements for four hundred years,” Race said.

‘No… No, it couldn’t,’ Chambers said.

‘Which means somebody else built this bridge,’ Lauren said. ‘And recently, too.’

‘But why the elaborate set-up?’ Race said, indicating the length of rope that stretched out across the ravine to the lowest point of the rope bridge. ‘Why attach a rope to this end of the bridge and drop the whole thing down on the other side?’

‘I don’t know,’ Chambers said. ‘You’d only do something like that if you wanted to keep something trapped on the tower top…’

Nash turned to Lauren. ‘What do you think?’

Lauren peered over at the tower, partially obscured by the veil of lightly falling rain.

‘It’s high enough to match the angle on the NRI,’ she looked at her digital compass. ‘And we’re exactly 632 metres horizontally from the village. Factoring in the elevation, I’d say it’s a good bet the idol’s over there.’

Van Lewen and Cochrane hauled the rope bridge up and looped its ends around the two stone buttresses on their side of the ravine. Now the great swooping rope bridge spanned the chasm, linking the skyscraper-like rock tower to the spiralling path that ran around it.

The rain continued to fall.

Jagged forks of brilliant white lightning began to illuminate the sky.

‘Sergeant,’ Captain Scott said. ‘Safety rope.’

Van Lewen immediately brought a strange-looking object out from his backpack. It was a shiny silver grappling hook of some sort. Attached to it was a coil of black nylon rope.

The tall sergeant quickly jammed the shaft of the grappling hook into the M-203 grenade launcher attached to the barrel of his M-16. Then he aimed his gun across the chasm and fired.

With a gaseous shoosh! the grappling hook shot out from Van Lewen’s grenade launcher and arced gracefully over the chasm, its sharp silver claws snapping out into position as it flew, its black rope wobbling through the air behind it.

The hook landed on the tower top on the other side of the chasm and dug its claws into the base of a thick tree there. Van Lewen then secured his end of the rope to one of the stone buttresses on their side of the chasm so that now the nylon rope spanned the gorge just above the drooping suspension bridge.

‘All right, everyone,’ Scott said, ‘keep one hand on the safety rope as you cross the bridge. If the bridge drops from under you, the rope will keep you from falling.’

Van Lewen must have seen Race go pale. ‘You’ll be all right. Just keep a hold of that rope and you’ll make it.’

The Green Berets went first, one at a time.

The narrow rope bridge rocked and swayed beneath their weight as they walked, but it held. The rest of the group followed behind them, holding onto the nylon safety rope as they crossed the long swooping suspension bridge in the constant subtropical rain.

Race crossed the rope bridge last of all, holding onto the safety rope so hard his knuckles went white. As such, he crossed the bridge more slowly than the others, so by the time he stepped onto the ledge on the other side, they had already gone on ahead and all he saw was a damp stone stairway leading up into the foliage. He hurried up it after them.

Dripping green leaves crowded in on either side of him.

Wet fern fronds slapped against his face as he climbed the watersoaked stone slabs after the others. After about thirty seconds of climbing, he burst through a large set of branches and found himself standing in a small clearing of some sort.

Everyone else was already there. But they just stood there, motionless. At first Race didn’t know what had made them stop, but then he saw that they all had their flashlights pointed up and to the left.

His gaze followed their flashlight beams and he saw it.

‘Holy Christ,’ he breathed.

There, situated on the highest point of the rock tower— covered in hard-packed mud and moss, concealed by weeds all around it, and glistening wet in the ever-falling rain— stood an ominous stone structure.

It was cloaked in shadow and wetness, but it was clear that this was a structure that had been designed to exude menace and power. A structure that could have had no other purpose than to inspire fear, idolatry and worship.

It was a temple.

Race stared at the dark stone temple and swallowed hard.

It looked evil.

Cold and cruel and evil.

It wasn’t a very big structure. In fact, it was barely even one storey tall.

But Race knew that wasn’t really the case.

He guessed what they were seeing was only the very top of the temple —the tip of the iceberg—because the ruined section of it that they now saw finished too abruptly. It just disappeared into the mud beneath their feet.

Race presumed that the rest of the enormous structure lay buried in the mud beneath them, consumed by four hundred years of accumulated wet earth.

What he saw, however, was frightening enough.

The temple was roughly pyramidal in shape—two wide stone steps led up to a small cube-like structure that was no larger than the average garage. He had an idea what the cube-shaped structure was—it was a tabernacle of some sort, a holy chamber not unlike those found atop Aztec or Mayan pyramids.

A series of gruesome pictographs had been carved into the walls of the tabernacle—snarling catlike monsters wielding scythe-like claws; dying humans screaming in agony. Cracks of age littered the stone walls of the temple.

The unending subtropical rain ran in rivulets down its carved stone walls, giving life to the characters in the horrific scenes on the walls—generating the same effect that running water had produced on the stone totem earlier.

In the centre of the tabernacle, however, lay the most intriguing aspect of the whole structure—-an entrance of some kind. A squareshaped portal.

But this portal had been stopped up. At some time in the distant past someone had wedged an enormous boulder into it, blocking it. The boulder was absolutely huge. Race guessed that it must have taken at least ten men to move it into place.

‘Definitely pre-Incan,’ Chambers said, as he examined the carvings.

‘Yes, absolutely,’ Lopez said.

‘How do you know?’ Nash asked.

‘Pictographs are too closely spaced,’ Chambers said.

‘And much too detailed,’ Lopez said.

Nash turned to Captain Scott. ‘Check on Reichart back at the village.”

‘Yes, sir.’ Scott stepped away from the circle and pulled a portable radio from his pack.

Lopez and Chambers were still talking shop.

‘What do you think?’ Lopez said. ‘Chachapoyan?’