Clive Cussler - Inca Gold

Pitt had been wearing the amber ring he had taken from the corpse at the bottom of the sacred well with the setting unseen under his finger. He slipped it off and handed it to Shannon without speaking.

She held it up to the light from a round window, staring in amazement at the tiny ancient insect imbedded in the amber. "Where. . . ?" her voice trailed off.

"Whoever posed as Doc murdered him and took his place. You accepted the imposter because there was no reason not to. The possibility of foul play never entered your mind. The killer's only mistake was forgetting to remove the ring when he threw Doc's body into the sinkhole."

"You're saying Doc was murdered before I left the States?" she stated in bewilderment.

"Only a day or two after he arrived at the campsite," Pitt explained. "Judging from the condition of the body, he must have been under water for more than a month."

"Strange that Miles and I missed seeing him."

"Not so strange. You descended directly in front of the passage to the adjoining cavern and were sucked in almost immediately. I reached the bottom on the opposite side and was able to swim a search grid, looking for what I thought would be two fresh bodies before the surge caught me. Instead, I found Doc's remains and the bones of a sixteenth-century Spanish soldier."

"So Doc really was murdered," she said as a look of horror dawned on her face. "Juan Chaco must have known, because he was the liaison for our project and was working with Doc before we arrived. Is it possible he was involved?"

Pitt nodded. "Up to his eyeballs. If you were smuggling ancient treasures, where could you find a better informant and front man than an internationally respected archaeological expert and government official?"

"Then who was the imposter?"

"Another agent of the Solpemachaco. A canny operator who staged a masterful performance of his death, with Amaru's help. Perhaps he's one of the men at the top of the organization who doesn't mind getting his hands dirty. We may never know."

"If he murdered Doc, he deserves to be hanged," Shannon said, her hazel eyes glinting with anger.

"At least we'll be able to nail Juan Chaco to the door of a Peruvian courthouse-" Pitt suddenly tensed and swung toward the cockpit as Giordino threw the helicopter in a steeply banked circle. "What's up?"

"A gut feeling," Giordino answered. "I decided to run a three-sixty to check our tail. Good thing I'm sensitive to vibes. We've got company."

Pitt pushed himself to his feet, returned to the cockpit and, favoring his leg, eased into the copilot's seat. "Bandits or good guys?" he asked.

"Our pals who dropped in on us at the temple didn't fall for your artful dodge to Chiclayo." Without taking his hands from the controls, Giordino nodded out of the windshield to his left at a helicopter crossing a low ridge of mountains to the east.

"They must have guessed our course and overhauled us after you reduced speed to conserve fuel," Pitt surmised.

"No racks mounting air-to-air rockets," observed Giordino. "They'll have to shoot us down with rifles--"

A burst of flame and a puff of smoke erupted from the open forward passenger door of the pursuing aircraft, and a rocket soared through the sky, passing so close to the nose of the helicopter Pitt and Giordino felt they could have reached out the side windows and touched it.

"Correction," Pitt called. "A forty-millimeter rocket launcher. The same one they used against the temple."

Giordino slammed the collective pitch into an abrupt ascent and shoved the throttles to their stops in an attempt to throw off the launcher team's aim. "Grab your rifle and keep them busy until I can reach those low clouds along the coast."

"Tough luck!" Pitt shouted over the shrill whine of the engines. "I tossed it away, and my Colt is empty. Any of you carry a gun on board?"

Giordino made an imperceptible nod as he hurled the chopper in another violent maneuver. "I can't speak for the rest of them. You'll find mine wedged in a corner behind the cabin bulkhead."

Pitt took a radio headset that was hanging on the arm of his seat and clamped it over his ears. Then he struggled out of his seat and clutched both sides of the open cockpit door with his hands to stay on his feet during a sharp turn. He plugged the lead from the headset into a socket mounted on the bulkhead and hailed Giordino. "Put on your headset so we can coordinate our defense."

Giordino didn't answer as he mashed down on the left pedal and skidded the craft around in a flat turn. As if he were juggling, he balanced his movements with the controls while slipping the headset over his ears. He winced and involuntarily ducked as another rocket tore through the air less than a meter under the belly of the helicopter and exploded in an orange burst of flame against the palisade of a low mountain.

Grabbing whatever handhold was within reach, Pitt staggered to the side passenger door, undogged the latches, and slid the door back until it was wide open. Shannon, her face showing more concern than fear, crawled across the floor with a cargo rope and wrapped one end around Pitt's waist as he was reaching for the automatic rifle Giordino had used to knock out the Peruvian pilots. Then she tied the opposite end to a longitudinal strut.

"Now you won't fall out," she exclaimed.

Pitt smiled. "I don't deserve you." Then he was lying flat on his stomach aiming the rifle out the door. "I'm ready, Al. Give me a clear shot."

Giordino fought to twist the helicopter so that Pitt would face the blind side of the attackers. Because the passenger doors were positioned on the same side of both helicopters, the Peruvian pilot was faced with the same dilemma. He might have risked opening the clamshell doors in the aft end to allow the mercenary rifleman to blast away with an open line of fire, but that would have slowed his airspeed and made control of the chopper unwieldy. Like old propeller-driven warbirds tangling in a dogfight, the pilots maneuvered for an advantage, hurling their aircraft around the sky in a series of acrobatics never intended by their designers.

His opponent knew his stuff, thought Giordino, with the respect of one professional for another. Outgunned by the military mercenaries, he felt like a mouse tormented by a cat before becoming a quick snack. His eyes darted from the instruments to his nemesis, then down at the ground to make certain he didn't pile into a low ridge or a tree. He yanked back the collective and broadened the pitch of the rotor blades to increase their bite in the damp air. The chopper shot upward in a maneuver matched by the other pilot. But then Giordino pushed the nose down and mashed his foot on the right rudder pedal, accelerating and throwing the craft on its side under his attacker and giving Pitt a straight shot.

"Now!" he yelled in his microphone.

Pitt didn't aim at the pilots in the cockpit, he sighted at the engine hump below the rotor and squeezed the trigger. The gun spat twice and went silent.

"What's wrong?" inquired Giordino. "No gunfire. I run interference to the goal line and you fumble the ball."

"This gun had only two rounds in it," Pitt snapped back.

"When I took it off one of Amaru's gunmen, I didn't stop to count the shells."

Furious with frustration, Pitt jerked out the clip and saw it was empty. "Did any of you bring a gun on board?" he shouted to Rodgers and the petrified students.

Rodgers, tightly strapped in a seat with legs braced against a bulkhead to avoid being bounced around by Giordino's violent tactics, spread his hands. "We left them behind when we made a break for the ship."

At that instant a rocket burst through a port window, flamed across the width of the fuselage, and exited through the opposite side of the helicopter without bursting or injuring anyone. Designed to detonate after striking armored vehicles or fortified bunkers, the rocket failed to explode after striking thin aluminum and plastic. If one hits the turbines, Pitt thought uneasily, it's all over. He stared wildly about the cabin, saw that they had all released their shoulder harnesses and lay huddled on the floor under the seats as if the canvas webbing and small tubular supports could stop a forty-millimeter tank-killing rocket. He cursed as the wildly swaying aircraft threw him against the doorframe.