Excavation

Ralph laughed as they reached the ladder. “I doubt the Incas left us a cooler down there, but I’m willing to search.” Ralph waved his flashlight for Maggie to mount the ladder first while he lit the way.

Maggie’s smile faded from her lips as she climbed away from Ralph’s light and into the gloom of the next level. Their banter in the face of their predicament did little to fend off the true terror; the darkness beyond the brightness was always there, reminding them how precarious their situation was.

As she awaited the others, she considered Ralph’s last words. Just what had the Incas left them down there? What lay within the chamber beyond the sealed door, and what had happened to Gil’s two companions?

By the time the others had regrouped at the foot of the ladder on the second level, Maggie’s curiosity had been piqued. Also by focusing on these mysteries, her fear of being buried under fifty feet of collapsing temple could be somewhat allayed. If the anxiety grew too intense…

Maggie shook her head. She would not lose control again. She watched Sam climb down the ladder with a twinge of guilt. After her attack last night, she had not been totally honest with him. She had failed to explain that the onset of her “seizures” had begun after witnessing the death of Patrick Dugan in the roadside ditch in Belfast. Afterward, the doctors had not been able to find any physiological cause for her attacks, though the consensus was the seizures were most likely a form of severe panic. She shoved back the growing guilt. The details were not Sam’s business. After the initial entrapment, she had come to grips with their situation. As long as she could keep herself distracted, she would be okay.

Nearby, Sam tried his walkie-talkie. The radio still worked, but the static was a bit worse this much deeper. He let Philip know about their repositioning.

Once he was done, Maggie crossed to Sam. She wet her lips. “I’d like to borrow your ultraviolet lamp.”

“What for?”

“I want to go see what damage Gil and the others did to the dig.”

“I can’t let you go traipsing about on your own. We need to stick together.” He began to turn away.

She grabbed his shoulder. “It wasn’t a request, Sam. I’m going. It’ll only take a few minutes.”

Denal stood a few steps away. “I… I go with you, Miss Maggie.”

Sam faced them and seemed to recognize her determination. “Fine. But don’t be gone longer than fifteen minutes. We need to conserve our light sources, and I don’t want to be hunting you both down.”

Maggie nodded. “Thanks, Sam.”

“I’m coming with you two,” Norman said, snugging his camera around his shoulder.

Ralph also had a gleam of interest, but Sam squashed it. “The three of you go on. Ralph and I will go through this level with the flashlight and assess the structural integrity.” He dug his lamp out of his pocket and held it toward Maggie, but he did not release it without a final word of caution. “Fifteen minutes. Be careful.”

She heard the worry in his stern voice, and that dulled the annoyance in her own response. “I know, Sam,” she said softly, taking the Wood’s lamp from him. “You needn’t worry.”

He grinned, then returned to his walkie-talkie and ongoing argument with Philip.

Maggie clicked on the ultraviolet light and signaled for her two companions to follow her to the next ladder. As they abandoned the brighter light, the darkness of the temple wrapped close around them. Ahead, the purplish glow lit up the quartz in the granite blocks, creating a miniature starscape spreading down the passage. Maggie led them onward, the others sticking closer to her side.

As they traversed the series of ladders to the deepest level of the dig, Maggie’s heart began thudding louder and louder in her own ears. Soon her heartbeat seemed almost to be coming from beyond her chest.

“What’s that noise?” Norman asked as he stepped off the rung of the last ladder.

Denal answered, his voice a whisper. “I hear it before. After Señor Sala crawled through that doorway.”

Maggie realized the beating in her ears wasn’t her own heart but the external thudding of something deeper in the temple. It even reverberated through the stones under her feet.

“It sounds like a big clock ticking,” Norman said.

Maggie raised her light. “Let’s keep going.” Compared to the sonorous beat from below, her own voice sounded like the squeak of a mouse.

Winding past the last of the tunnels, Maggie soon stood before the violated doorway. Broken bolts marked where the seals had been shattered. In the dirt to the sides of the threshold, the three bands of etched hematite lay discarded, all of them cracked and chipped from the crowbar used to pry them loose. The offending tool still leaned against the wall.

Denal bent and picked up the crowbar, hefting it in his grip. He glanced to Maggie. She did not begrudge him a weapon.