Excavation

With adrenaline fierce in her veins, she shoved Sam and the others into a side chamber.

The blast caught them at the entrance. The concussion and explosion of air propelled them all across the room. They struck the far wall and fell to the stone floor in a pile of limbs.

With the lamps flickering around them, Maggie rolled up to her knees. Past her ringing ears, she heard Ralph groan beside her. Maggie took stock of her own injuries. She seemed to be unscathed, but as she viewed the damage done by the grenade through the settling dust, a moan escaped her throat, too.

They were trapped!

The passage that led to the last ladder was now a tumble of rock and dirt. The grenade had collapsed the tunnel to the surface, taking out a good section of the first level’s ceiling. Stones lay in a jumble from the triggered landslide.

Around her, the remainder of the ruins grumbled and groaned with the shift in stresses. Thirty feet of earth pushed to collapse more of the subterranean ruin.

What were they going to do?

Then the lights flickered a final time and died. Blackness swallowed them up.

“Everyone okay?” Sam asked numbly, his voice exaggerated by his deafened ears.

Norman answered, “Fine. I’m buried thirty feet underground… in a tomb. But otherwise, I’m fine.”

“Okay here, too, Sam,” Ralph added, his usual bravado dimmed.

Sam coughed on the thick dust in the air. “Maggie?”

She could no longer answer. She felt her limbs stiffen and begin the first of the characteristic tremors. She fell back upon the stone floor as the seizure grabbed her body and dragged her consciousness away.

The last she heard was Norman’s strangled cry. “Sam, something’s wrong with Maggie!”

Gil fled from the blast in the pit, the roar ripping through the quiet jungle. Smoke and debris, sweeping up into the night, chased him down the slope to the floor of the camp. Though the loose stones cut his bare feet, he scrambled down the stairs, cursing himself for abandoning his boots below. Why hadn’t he tossed his footwear and rifle free of the booby trap before he jumped? But he knew the answer. He had panicked.

Overhead, a flock of frightened parrots scattered across the beam of one of the nearby spotlights. The blaze of blue-and-red plumage across the black night startled him. As the single explosion echoed away, the jungle answered the grenade’s challenge with bird screeches and monkey calls.

The jungle had awakened – as had the camp below.

Lights swelled within several of the workers’ cheap tents. Shadows already moved inside as the sleepers awakened. Even one of the students’ tents blossomed with the warm glow.

Weaponless and with no companions, Gil dared not try to take the camp alone. He would have to gather other men and return quickly to eliminate the americanos and their workers. At least the grenade had managed to bring down the only entrance to the subterranean ruins. The bounty below should be protected until he could return with men and construction tools to dig it free. Not concerned about “damaging the fragile site,” his team could have the treasure hoard plucked in short order. A day or two at the most.

Yet, before Gil could gather more men, he had one more mission to complete here at the camp. Reaching the cluster of tents, he slipped into the darker shadows between two of the workers’ rough shelters. Faces began to peek out of tent flaps. Their eyes were surely on the plume of dirt still smoking from the excavation site.

No one spotted Gil.

As he slipped behind the tents, the whispered squabble in the guttural Quechan tongue could be heard from the neighboring tent. A shrill voice also called from where the students kept their more expensive shelters. “Guillermo! Sam! What happened?” It was the pompous leader of these maricon students.

Gil ignored the growing exchange of voices. From a pile of stacked work tools, he silently removed a pickax and shearing knife. Crossing to the rear of one of the shelters, Gil used the knife to slice a new entrance. His sharp blade hissed through the thick canvas. Slipping through the hole, Gil entered the tent with his pickax.

He studied his quarry – the satellite communication system. Luckily, he did not need to wreak havoc on the entire assembly. It had a weak link. The small computer itself. Much of the other equipment had spare parts, but not the CPU. Without it, the camp would be cut off from sounding the alarm or calling for help.

Gil raised the pickax over his shoulder and waited. His fractured collarbone protested the weight of the iron tool – but he did not have long to pause. Again Philip Sykes’s angered voice barked frantic orders from his tent flap, clearly scared to leave the safety of his shelter: “Sala, where the hell are you?”