“Her mind,” Verhoven said. “She knows what you know. But she’s smaller and weaker. That’s what they’re after. You saw them going through our things. They’re looking for something, and they want her help to find it.”

“I would have rather they take me,” McCarter said.

Verhoven agreed. “Well, if she’s smart enough to play dumb, maybe they’ll come back and ask for your help.”

“What about the police, the army?” Brazos asked. “They can’t do this here.”

“We’re so far out,” Danielle said, “I doubt anyone will ever know.”

“What about Hawker and Polaski?” McCarter said. “They know we’re here.”

“We can’t wait for them,” she insisted. “We have to do something ourselves.”

“But if they try to reach us,” McCarter began, “when Hawker comes back, he’ll realize something has gone wrong, then maybe he could—”

“He’s dead,” she said bluntly, feeling the pain of the words she hadn’t wanted to speak aloud. “According to that son of a bitch who took Susan, Hawker and Polaski were shot down long before they could make it to Manaus. That same goddamned helicopter that attacked us.”

As she spoke, Danielle felt the chill of her words hit the others, the realization that they were truly on their own. She noticed Verhoven grit his teeth, but otherwise he was nonresponsive. She guessed he had assumed that fact from the start.

As the others fell silent, Danielle tried to get ahold of her reeling mind. It was hard for her to fathom the depths of what had just happened, the speed and severity of the sudden reversal. Twenty-four hours ago she’d been on the verge of success, and now …

Now they’d been attacked and made prisoners by some kind of paramilitary group. Mercenaries of some kind watching them, while dead members of her team lay in the clearing covered by tarps. Somewhere in the jungle Hawker and Polaski lay in a mangled, blackened wreck. And Moore … his kind face flashed through her mind; a good man, an honest man, who’d been like a father to her. It seemed like some absurd nightmare from which she couldn’t wake. She began to seethe with anger, a silent fury building in her, and she vowed to find a way out of this madness, to make these men pay for what they’d done—or die trying.

She turned her attention back to the others.

“Verhoven’s right,” she said. “We have to use every advantage, no matter how small.” She realized that McCarter might be such an asset. “There’s a chance they might need you,” she said to him. “If they take you, grab anything that might help. Maybe one of your tools or something we could use to work on this chain. That would make our chances better.”

“Better?” McCarter said. “Better than what?”

“Better than they are now.”

McCarter breathed in heavily. “This is insane,” he said, shaking his head. He didn’t seem to be handling the situation well. Another reason they should have never brought along civilians.

She turned to Verhoven. “Did you see the soldier who held the keys?” She hadn’t thought to look. She’d still been groggy at the time. But as her wits came back to her, she knew that man would have to be a target.

“Yeah,” Verhoven said, slyly. “I got a good look as he unlocked the girl. He’s got a scar above his left eye, like someone cracked ’im once.”

Danielle turned to McCarter again. “You’re the only one they’re likely to use. If they give you any kind of freedom, you remember him and see what you can do.”

Verhoven chimed in. “And if you get a chance, you talk with Susan, tell her to be ready.”

“Ready for what?” McCarter asked.

“For anything,” Verhoven said. “And when you come back, you look me in the eyes. I’ll spit if it’s time to try something.”

Danielle nodded her agreement.

Beside her, McCarter looked sick. “Spit,” he whispered, as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “Grab something … try something … this is insanity.”

He breathed heavily, looking hopelessly up at the sky, and Danielle prayed that he would hold it together.

CHAPTER 27

It took three tries, but Susan Briggs finally found a mask that fit her face. Kaufman then introduced her to Norman Lang, his chief scientist, explaining that she was to help him in whatever way he asked.

Lang seemed nervous. Only a few inches taller than her and probably no more than 140 pounds soaking wet, he certainly wasn’t cut from the same cloth as the mercenaries, but there was an edge to him that made her uncomfortable. He was constantly licking his lips and flexing the muscles in his jaw, as if he were clenching and unclenching his teeth. He must have cleaned the lenses on his black-plastic-framed glasses five times in the ten minutes they stood together waiting for Kaufman.

The three of them entered the temple together, along with two of Kaufman’s hired guns, all of them breathing heavily through the charcoal-filter masks.

They descended the steps carefully, with Lang videotaping the journey on a digital camcorder. The walls were tinted in places, painted long ago in some reddish hue, but they were also scarred and discolored, with bright yellow stains and splotches. Where the stone was bare it glistened in the light, dripping with condensation.

Lang zoomed in for a close-up on what appeared to be some yellowish form of rust. “Sulfur,” he said. “Eating away at the granite.”

They walked into the first chamber. Susan stared at the piles of skulls. Professor McCarter’s description had not done the sight justice.

Lang ordered all the lights off and switched on a black light in their stead. The UV light illuminated their eyes and teeth and the laces on Lang’s tennis shoes, all glowing purple-white as if they were lit from within. It turned the skulls into a ghostly sight and brought out a million speckles hidden within the stone of the floor and walls. But whatever Lang was searching for, he didn’t see it. He switched back to normal light and the group continued, through a doorway into a second room.

They examined this room as they had the foyer, regular light first, ultraviolet second. Again nothing of interest was found.

Lang turned to her. “What’s next?”

She was navigating from McCarter’s descriptions.

“It should be the altar room,” she said.

The next room was indeed the altar room, but to enter it they had to pass through the falling beam of light.

Lang held his hand in the stream. It was wide but less then a centimeter thick, a long, narrow slit allowing the sunlight in from somewhere up above. He seemed suspicious.

“Are there any traps here?” Lang asked.

“Traps?”

“Yeah, booby traps, like spears triggered from stepping into the light?”

She blinked though the mask. “You’re kidding me, right?”

Lang did not look as if he were.

“You’ve seen too many movies,” she said.

Looking no more comfortable, Lang set himself to go forward and edged through the beam of light. The altar room lay on the other side.

Susan watched as Lang wandered about, probing this section and that, looking through the viewfinder and recording things he saw. Several times he used the black light and occasionally he looked at other instruments he’d brought along. He seemed mostly underwhelmed. Finally, he made his way to the platform, where he switched off the lights once again.

This time something appeared in the presence of the ultraviolet rays: geometric markings hidden within the stone face of the altar.

Susan stared at them.

Kaufman noticed her gaze. “Do you recognize these?”

She didn’t. “They don’t look like glyphs.”

Lang aimed his camera at the top surface of the altar, and another set of marks appeared: two elongated grooves embedded within the stone, running from the front of the altar to the back. Widely spaced at first, the grooves narrowed near the middle, forming parallel lines for several inches before bending outward again. As they neared the back edge, the lines diverged completely, until they ran away from each other, in opposite directions, spreading across the top of the design in flowing, rolling swirls. At various points on the altar there were carved depressions in the stone, all of them within the boundaries created by the two lines.