Burial Ground (8 page)

Colton looked up from the digital elevation
reconstruction to find Gearhardt smirking at him. This was good. It
was the first time Gearhardt had made any attempt at levity since
he had first called. Colton didn't blame the guy, but
single-mindedness in a situation like this impaired the ability to
adapt and recognize options and alternative solutions. And besides,
he didn't much care for the idea of having to drag his old friend's
corpse down out of the Andes.

"What did you think of the pilot?" Gearhardt
asked.

"Merritt? Or should I say the former James
Merritt Westlake? I read his dossier, same as you. Went AWOL from
the 160
^th
Special Operations Aviation Regiment during
his second tour in Afghanistan in 2002. Just up and vanished in the
middle of the night. Somehow, he managed to get out of the Middle
East, and ended up here, piloting that flying heap of junk. In
times of war, going absent without leave equates to desertion, an
offense just shy of treason. If the Army were to somehow learn his
whereabouts, they'd have him cuffed and on a plane stateside in a
matter of hours. And now he reappears with your son's remains and a
priceless headdress that could have financed a comfortable
retirement down here where no one could ever find him. He took a
huge risk sticking his neck out like that. Just walking into the
Consulate where they could have challenged his fake identification
and arrested him on the spot took serious balls."

"That's not what I asked, and you know
it."

Colton sighed. "I don't trust any man who
doesn't try to fence the headdress, or at least melt it down and
sell it, under the circumstances. It goes against human nature. No
one would have known, let alone caught him. Not unless he had his
eye on the bigger score, and even then he'd be stupid to turn in
the artifact. In my opinion, this makes him unpredictable. But to
answer your question, no, I don't think he had anything to do with
your son's death. I do, however, think he knows more than he's
letting on."

"And this unpredictability? How does it
factor into the equation?"

"It could not be a factor at all. He could
climb back in his plane, take off, and we'd never hear from him
again. Or..." Colton paused. "Once we turn our backs on him, we could
find that we've made a terrible mistake. He was in special ops
after all, and I've learned not to trust a military man."

"You were a military man."

Colton smirked. "You're the one who has to
trust
me
."

"So what do you suggest?"

"How much do you think it would take to
convince Mr. Merritt to willingly join our expedition without
having to threaten him with his past? Keep your friends close and
your enemies closer, and all that."

"What if he proves...unpredictable along the
way?"

Colton smiled and nodded toward the doorway
to the adjacent room, through which he could see two of the four
men he had personally selected as their "dig crew" leaning against
the far wall, taking advantage of the downtime while they
could.

"We're prepared for every contingency,"
Colton said. "There's absolutely nothing we can't handle."

Laguna Pomacochas

Pomacochas, Peru

6:25 a.m.

Sam sat on the blonde sands of the shore and
watched the sun rise across the rolling blue lake. The crescent
ball of celestial fire seemed to set the gentle waves ablaze in a
stunning showcase of oranges and yellows. She had nearly forgotten
how beautiful this area of the world truly was. The smell of dew
and exotic blossoms rather than exhaust and pavement; birdsong and
the lapping of waves versus the grumble of traffic and airplanes;
the crisp blue sky unfettered by the haze of pollution. She almost
imagined she could see the thin rays radiating from the sun. Had it
really been two years since she'd been here last? The bustle and
demands of the university had swept her away, but it almost felt as
though her heart had been here the entire time and now suddenly she
was again whole, at peace with herself and the universe. She wished
she could sit in this very spot forever, but there was a part of
her that was raring to strike off into the mountains, where
somewhere, hidden for centuries, lay the virgin ruins of the
ancient civilization that had spawned the unique headdress, itself
an amalgamous anomaly of cultural hybridization that should by no
means even exist. The mystery of its origin was thrilling. Just
thinking about it caused her heart to race.

She took a sip of the steaming guarana bean
coffee and savored its bitter tang. This was one of the few perks
of modern society she was going to miss in the weeks ahead. Boiling
a handful of grounds over a fire served its purpose, but it just
wasn't the same. Not by a long shot.

Draining the last of the brew, she rose from
the sand and mounted the pier, accompanied by the hollow
clump
of her footsteps on the weathered planks. The two
pilots were at the far end, unloading the gear from the cargo holds
with less care than she would have liked. Some of those boxes
contained sensitive electronic equipment: a ground-penetrating
radar unit, a portable magnetometer, digging and grading utensils,
cameras, sound gear, and a host of other goods they could never
replace so many thousands of miles from home.

The dark-skinned pilot dropped a large
duffel bag that made a crashing sound.

"Careful!" she shouted.

He looked up at her, shrugged, and muttered
something under his breath. Her Spanish was a little rusty, but she
recognized that he hadn't been apologizing. He turned away and went
back to piling their belongings in an ugly heap that threatened to
topple into the lake.

"If any of that stuff is broken---"

"You can take it out of my check," the other
pilot said.

"That equipment is worth more than you make
in a year."

"You'd be surprised what I make." The man
offered a lopsided grin before resuming his task. "You could always
help, you know."

"Sure. I'll do your job and then you can do
mine. Think you can handle that?"

"So far all I've seen you doing is sitting
on your duff drinking coffee. It might be rough, but I think I can
swing it."

He was exasperating. She resisted the urge
to stomp her feet in frustration and turned away. "Just try to be
more careful," she called back over her shoulder.

If anything was broken, she'd do more than
take it out of his check. She'd take it right out of his hide, and
she'd revel in every second of it. Who did this guy think he was
anyway? He was a pilot in the heart of the Amazonas Province, a
washout who obviously couldn't cut the job back home in the States.
And why was she allowing him to get to her anyway?

She glanced back only to find him still
watching her with an amused expression. With considerable effort,
she suppressed the urge to storm back down the pier and let him
have a piece of her mind, and walked up the dirt road toward the
hotel, where the others were already establishing a base of
operations from which to launch their expedition.

An iron gate, flaking with rust, barred the
thin walkway that separated the guest wing from the owner's abode.
With a squeal of hinges, she opened it inward and passed into the
courtyard. A flock of startled saffron finches exploded from the
nests they'd chiseled into the building itself and swirled around
the enclave. A rain of yellow and orange feathers and droplets of
feces filled the air. She stayed safely beneath the overhang until
she reached the first room, rapped a couple times with her
knuckles, and entered.

Leo and the man who never left his
side---Marcus Colton, if she remembered correctly---were still sitting
at the small square table, poring over the stack of maps and
conversing in hushed tones. Fat lot of good those fancy satellite
maps would do them. The jungle grew and changed in unpredictable
ways every single day, and it would determine their course, not the
other way around. This region of the Western Andes had remained
uncharted for a reason. No man was going to impose his will on the
refined chaos that was the tropical cloud forest.

The flimsy door between the two rooms stood
ajar. Beyond, the documentary director and her cameraman, neither
of whom looked as though they'd been out of film school for more
than a couple years, shared an animated conversation over steaming
mugs and a platter of scrambled eggs dotted with red and green
peppers. The four large men Leo had hired to carry their heavier
equipment and act as her excavation crew lounged against the wall,
seemingly reserving their energy for the journey ahead. They
certainly weren't the graduate students with which she was
accustomed to working. All four were in their late-twenties and
appeared somehow hardened. In their hurry to catch the connecting
flight from Lima to Chiclayo she had only been introduced in
passing, but she believed she remembered their names. Nate Webber
was the man on the end, shorter than the others, yet by no means
small. He stood perhaps five-ten and had Hispanic dark eyes and
skin, yet his shaggy hair was sun-lightened to a streaked auburn.
Tad Morton sat beside him. He was taller and wirier, and reminded
her of a farmboy with his sandy hair and freckles, but his brown
eyes were sharp and always moving. Then there was Aaron Sorenson, a
hulking, stereotypical Swede who could have passed for Dolph
Lundgren from a distance, and Devin Rippeth, who immediately made
her uncomfortable. His leathery skin was pock-scarred, his eyes a
cold shade of blue. His head was shaved bald, but he had thick
black eyebrows and a gruff goatee. What looked like the tail of a
dragon curled around his neck from the tattoo beneath the collar of
his T-shirt.

Knowing Leo, these men had been hired for
more than their digging skills, but she wasn't about to complain.
They needed to be prepared for anything. There were no hospitals or
police in the unforgiving wilderness.

The final member of their party was
conspicuously absent. She peered around one final time before
slipping back out into the courtyard. He sat on the edge of the
fountain, cold cup of coffee at his feet, his attention focused on
his lap. She hadn't seen him when she originally entered, perhaps
because he was sitting stone-still, the only movement his hands
turning something over and over between them.

He looked up as she approached and gave her
a weak smile, then returned his attention to his hands in his lap.
As the only other academic here, she figured she should make an
effort to get to know him. A cursory internet search had yielded a
dozen articles and citations from the late-Eighties and
early-Nineties. She'd been surprised to learn how similar their
fields were, despite the subject matter. She had always pictured
ornithologists as glorified hobbyists crouching in bushes with
binoculars around their necks, but when it came right down to it,
they were both scientists tracking the evolution of species over
time.

"What's that?" she asked with a nod to the
object in his hands. She sat down beside him on the lip of the
tiled fountain.

He steadied it and held it up. It was a
brown feather roughly the length of her palm with the faintest hint
of green toward the end.

"I don't know. There are more than ten
thousand species of birds in the world, just under a third of them
in South America alone. Nearly every one of them is in one database
or other, but this feather doesn't belong to any of them." He
chuckled softly to himself. "That's the most exciting thing about
it. Somewhere up there is a species that no one else has ever
studied before, and I intend to be the first."

9:08 a.m.

Merritt sat on the pontoon beneath the wing
of his plane and dangled his bare feet into the lake. He fought the
initial reflex to recoil his legs from the shock of the cold water,
and finished the last of his guava juice, wishing it had been
coffee. God, how he missed the stuff. Not a single day passed that
he didn't question his decision to give it up, but at least he was
sleeping better now, rather than lying awake for hours, a victim of
his waking nightmares. It was a small sacrifice, however. Life was
good again for the most part. Uncomplicated. Just how he liked
it.

The military had granted him the opportunity
to spread his wings. Unfortunately, it had also sharpened his
talons and trained him to use them however and whenever it saw
fit.

A bare-chested native rowed his dugout into
the middle of the lagoon, a dark silhouette against the reflection
of the rising sun on the waves. The diminutive man stood, gathered
a fishing net from the heap at the back of the boat, and tossed it
out onto the water. After a moment, the man sat back down and rowed
farther away, the net's buoys bobbing in his wake. Merritt almost
wished he could be like that man, but he did need just a little
more excitement after all. For all intents and purposes, the flying
provided just that. The speed. The heights. The battles against the
volatile tropical elements and the rush of alighting on nothing
more substantial than water. There was a part of him, the same part
that had driven him to enlist in the Army and then pushed him into
special ops, that longed for adventure and danger, but he still
wasn't able to forgive that aspect of his persona. It had sent him
careening through the gates of hell, and it had taken every last
ounce of his strength to claw his way back out.

He closed his eyes and let the sun warm his
face. It hadn't always been like that. He remembered all of the
hours he had spent dusting crops with his father back home in Iowa,
learning to fly in his old man's lap, rocketing so low over the
fields that his props clipped the grain. Like his father before
him, he was never happier than when he was in the sky, where
nothing could touch him and he controlled his own destiny. The
problem was that that life was too simple. He could see how it wore
down a man in his father's eyes, like those of a dog tethered in a
yard by the highway, watching all the cars speed past on the way to
destinations it would never know. And it would have killed him just
a little bit every day.