Clive Cussler - Inca Gold

He stood in the doorway of the chamber, staring stonily at the three men and one woman before him as if for the first time, relishing the defeat in their eyes, the weariness in their bodies, exactly the state he-wanted them.

"I regret the inconvenience," he said, speaking for the first time since the abduction. "It is good that you offered no resistance or you would have surely been shot."

"You speak pretty good English for a highlands guerrilla," Rodgers acknowledged, "Mr.-?"

"Tupac Amaru. I attended the University of Texas at Austin."

"What hath Texas wrought," Giordino mumbled under his breath.

"Why have you kidnapped us?" Shannon whispered in a voice hushed with fear and fatigue.

"For ransom, what else?" replied Amaru. "The Peruvian government will pay well for the return of such respected American scientists, not to mention their brilliant archaeology students, many of whom have rich and respected parents. The money will help us continue our fight against repression of the masses."

"Spoken like a Communist milking a dead cow," muttered Giordino.

"The old Russian version may well be history, but the philosophy of Mao Tse-tung lives on," Amaru explained patiently.

"It lives on, all right," Doc Miller sneered. "Billions of dollars in economic damage. Twenty-six thousand Peruvians dead, most of the victims the very peasants whose rights you claim to be fighting for-" His words were cut off by a rifle butt that was jammed into his lower back near the kidney. Miller sagged to the stone floor like a bag of potatoes, his face twisted in pain.

"You're hardly in a position to question my dedication to the cause," Amaru said coldly.

Giordino knelt beside the old man and cradled his head. He looked up at the terrorist leader with scorn. "You don't take criticism very well, do you?"

Giordino was prepared to ward off a blow to his exposed head, but before the guard could raise his rifle butt again, Shannon stepped between them.

She glared at Amaru, the pale fear in her face replaced with red anger. "You're a fraud," Shannon stated firmly.

Amaru looked at her with a bemused expression. "And what brings you to that curious conclusion, Dr. Kelsey?"

"You know my name?"

"My agent in the United States alerted me of your latest project to explore the mountains before you and your friends left the airport in Phoenix, Arizona."

"Informant, you mean."

Amaru shrugged. "Semantics mean little."

"A fraud and a charlatan," Shannon continued. "You and your men aren't Shining Path revolutionaries. Far from it. You're nothing more than huaqueros, thieving tomb robbers."

"She's right," Rodgers said, backing her up. "You wouldn't have time to chase around the countryside blowing up power lines and police stations and still accumulate the vast cache of artifacts inside this temple. It's obvious, you're running an elaborate artifact theft ring that has to be a full-time operation."

Amaru looked at his prisoners in mocking speculation. "Since the fact must be patently apparent to everyone in the room, I won't bother to deny it."

A few seconds passed in silence, then Doc Miller rose unsteadily to his feet and stared Amaru directly in the eye. "You thieving scum," he rasped. "Pillager, ravager of antiquities. If it was in my power, I'd have you and your band of looters shot down like--"

Miller broke off suddenly as Amaru, his features utterly lacking the least display of emotion and his black eyes venting evil, removed a Heckler & Koch nine-millimeter automatic from a hip holster. With the paralyzing inevitability of a dream, he calmly, precisely, shot Doc Miller in the chest. The reverberating blast echoed through the temple, deafening all ears. One shot was all that was required. Doc Miller jerked backward against the stone wall for one shocking moment, and then dropped forward onto his stomach without a sound, hands and arms twisted oddly beneath his chest as a pool of red oozed across the floor.

The captives all reflected different reactions. Rodgers stood like a statue frozen in time, eyes wide with shock and disbelief, while Shannon instinctively screamed. No stranger to violent death, Giordino clenched his hands at his sides. The ice-cold indifference of the murderous act filled him with a savage rage that was tempered only by maddening helplessness. There was no doubt in his mind, in anybody's mind, that Amaru intended to kill them all. With nothing to lose, Giordino tensed to leap at the killer and tear out his throat before he received the inevitable bullet through the head.

"Do not try it," said Amaru, reading Giordino's thoughts, aiming the muzzle of the automatic between the eyes that burned with hate. He inclined his head toward the guards, who stood with guns level and ready, and gave them orders in Spanish. Then he stepped aside as one of the guards grabbed Miller around the ankles, and dragged his body out of sight into the main room of the temple, leaving a trail of blood across the stone floor.

Shannon's scream had given way to uncontrollable sobbing as she stared with bleak, unwavering eyes at the bloody streak on the floor. She sagged to her knees in shock and buried her face in her hands. "He couldn't harm you. How could you shoot down a kindly old man?"

Giordino stared at Amaru. "For him, it was easy."

Amaru's flat, cold eyes crawled to Giordino's face. "You would do well to keep your mouth closed, little man. The good doctor was supposed to be a lesson that apparently you did not comprehend."

No one took notice of the return of the guard who had dragged away Miller's body. No one except Giordino. He caught the hat pulled down over the eyes, the hands concealed within the poncho. He flicked a glance at the second guard who slouched casually against the doorway, his gun now slung loosely over one shoulder, the muzzle pointing at no one in particular. Only two meters separated them. Giordino figured he could be all over the guard before he knew what hit him. But there was still the Heckler & Koch tightly gripped in Amaru's hand.

When Giordino spoke, his voice wore a cold edge. "You are going to die, Amaru. You are surely going to die as violently as all the innocent people you've murdered in cold blood."

Amaru didn't catch the millimetric curl of Giordino's lips, the slight squint of the eyes. His expression turned curious, then the teeth flashed and he laughed. "So? You think I'm going to die, do you? Will you be my executioner? Or will the proud young lady do me the honor?"

He leaned down and savagely jerked Shannon to her feet, took hold of her flowing ponytail, and viciously pulled her head backward until she was staring from wide, terrified eyes into his leering face. "I promise that after a few hours in my bed you'll crawl to obey my commands."

"Oh, God, no," Shannon moaned.

"I take great pleasure in raping women, listening as they scream and beg--"

A brawny arm tightened around his throat and choked off his words. "This is for all the women you made suffer," said Pitt, a macabre look in his intense green eyes, as he cast aside the poncho, jammed the barrel of the .45 Colt down the front of Amaru's pants, and pulled the trigger.

For the second time the small confines of the room echoed with the deafening sound of gunfire. Giordino hurled himself forward, his head and shoulder driving into the startled guard, crushing him against the hard wall, causing an explosive gasp of pain. He caught the distorted look of horror and agony on Amaru's face, the bulging eyes, his mouth open in a silent scream, a fleeting glimpse of the Heckler & Koch flying through the air as his hands clutched the mushrooming red stain in his groin. And then Giordino punched the guard in the teeth and tore the automatic rifle from his hands in almost the same movement. He swung around in a crouched firing position, muzzle aimed through the doorway.