Excavation

“I suppose.” Sam rolled his eyes, preparing himself to be humiliated if he should fail. At least, Philip had not been invited. Sam could not have tolerated failing in front of Mr. Harvard. “Let me grab my bottles and UV light.”

As Sam reached for his tent flap, the jungle suddenly erupted in a cacophony of screeches and calls. A thousand birds burst from the canopies around the camp and took to the air.

Maggie took a step closer to Sam. “What the hell…?”

Sam glanced around, but the rain forest quickly settled back down. “Something must have spooked them.” He listened a bit longer, but only the humming of the generator reached his ears. The jungle lay silent, like a dark stranger staring toward them. Sam studied the forest a moment more, then turned back to his tent. “I’ll get my stuff.”

He pushed through the flap and collected the satchel that held his dyes and special ultraviolet handlamp. As he was leaving, his eyes settled on the old Winchester. Instinctively, he grabbed it and slung it over his shoulder, but not before quickly loading a few 44/40 cartridges into the rifle’s magazine and pocketing a cardboard box of spare shells. After years of overnight camps in the Texas wilderness, Sam had learned to be prepared.

Crawling out of the tent, he found Maggie’s back to him. She searched the edges of the jungle. “It’s still so bloody quiet,” she said. “It’s like the forest’s holding its breath.”

“If we want to test this,” Sam said, anxious to be under way, “we’d better hightail it. Dawn is only a few hours away.”

Maggie nodded, reluctantly pulling her gaze away from the jungle.

Sam led the way toward the terraced ruins. With the rain forest so subdued, their footsteps on the granite stones seemed unusually loud. Sam found himself walking carefully, afraid of disturbing the silence, as though they were strolling through a graveyard at midnight. He was glad when they finally reached the summit of the Sun Plaza. Light shone up from the excavated shaft.

Limned in the light were two shadowy figures – one thin and one wide. Norman and Ralph. They stood apart from one another.

The ex-linebacker raised a hand in greeting. He pointed toward the shaft. “Who left the lamps on?”

Maggie shook her head as she climbed onto the flat-topped plaza. “I know I switched them off.” She surveyed the ruins around them. “That feckin’ Guillermo probably turned them on during his rounds and left ’ em on. Where is he anyway? I thought he was supposed to be guarding this place.”

“He’s probably in the forest watching out for those looters from last night. Maybe he was the one who spooked all those birds.”

The jungle remained deathly still. Norman eyed the black forest. “I never liked the dark. I get the willies alone in my darkroom at home.”

Ralph teased him with a remarkable rendition of the Twilight Zone theme. Norman pretended not to hear.

Sam climbed down first while Maggie and the others followed. Once at the bottom of the ladder, he helped Maggie off the rungs.

She turned to him, her head slightly bent, her palm still resting in his. “Did you hear something just then?”

Sam shook his head. All he could hear was his own pounding heart. He found his hand squeezing hers.

Ralph and Norman joined them.

Maggie pulled her hand away, listened for a moment more, then shrugged and took the lead. “Must be those Incan ghosts,” she muttered.

“Thanks, Maggie,” Norman said sourly. “That’s just what I wanted to hear when crawling through the ruins at midnight. I already got a bad enough feeling about this.”

Ralph again started his Twilight Zone theme.

“Bite me, Isaacson,” Norman snapped.

“I don’t lean that way, Normie.”

“Are you sure? You were a football player, weren’t you? What’s with all that ass slapping and piling on one another?”

“Shut up.”

“Jesus,” Maggie exclaimed. “Enough from the both of you. I can’t hear a feckin’ thing.”

Following behind Maggie, Sam ignored them all, lost in appreciating how Maggie moved as she climbed. Through the thin cotton khakis, her legs were muscled and firm and their shapeliness drew his eyes up her curves. Sam swallowed hard and wiped the dampness from his brow with a handkerchief. She’s a colleague, he had to remind himself. Like the army, his uncle frowned on fraternization while in the field. Unwanted attentions among members could strain a small site.

Still, it never hurt to look.

As they traversed to the second level of the dig, Sam marveled at his uncle’s revelation. This was once a Moche pyramid! It was hard to believe. Sam ran a palm along the granite stone walls.

Ahead, Maggie stopped again, pausing with her hand on the ladder that led to the third level. “Now I know I heard something,” she whispered. “Words… and somethin’ knocking…”