Laura 01 The Jaguar Prophecy (23 page)

They have little more than 20 minutes of flying still to do and the river runs straight for a long way at the moment. The scenery is breathtaking, with forest running right up to the river banks. Laura is in awe at all they are seeing.

The next split is coming up and Victor looks down at the GPS display - it is dead. Laura immediately notices Victor’s facial expression change to concern.

“What’s wrong, Victor?”

“The GPS is dead, I don’t know if we should turn left or right. There’s no power to it, check the fuse box by your feet.”

The split is now less than a minute away, they are already flying as slow as they can without stalling and cannot slow down any more. Laura ducks down and tries to get the fuse box lid off, but it is stuck.

“Now would be a good time, Laura.”

“The lid is stuck, hold on, ok got it.”

“No time,” Victor replies, the split dead ahead, he has to choose now.

“Follow the river,” Laura calls from beneath the dash.

“The river flows down both paths,” Victor replies as he banks the plane hard right at the last moment.

“Ouch, watch the flying!” Laura complains as she bumps her head.

“Shit.”

“It’s ok, it wasn’t that bad,” Laura comments, thinking he feels bad about her bumping her head.

“Dead end,” Victor replies as he puts the throttle to full power, trying to build up speed. Laura comes up from under the dash just in time to see a massive cliff in front of them with a breathtakingly beautiful waterfall.

Victor strains against the controls, pulling the plane up; slowly she climbs, the waterfall approaching fast. Victor manages to get the plane to point straight up just 50 feet before the waterfall, following it up for a bit before pulling back more on the controls. The plane slowly rolls backwards, causing it to fly inverted back the way they had come.

The move works, but they lose a lot of speed and the plane starts to stall, dropping fast to the river below. The engine moans against the strain of running on full power so slowly, trying to build up speed. Laura sees the water rushing directly towards the cabin; she is lying on the inside of the roof of the plane, having removed her harness to get to the fuse box.

Victor allows the plane to drop down, allowing it to regain some speed. The water rushes towards the airplane and Laura’s throat tightens, fear grips her, “Oh no, we are going to crash, this is it.” Just then Victor levels the plane off, still inverted, only 10 feet above the water. He keeps the plane flying inverted just above the water until they pass the split far enough by his reckoning for his next maneuver.

Slowly he presses forward on the controls. Being inverted, the plane slowly starts to climb. Suddenly a shudder goes through the plane and it feels as if it is going to be ripped to pieces.

Looking in the mirror, Victor is just in time to see the tip of the tail pulling out of the water. If he had pushed just a little more on the controls to make it climb faster, the tail would have dipped deeper into the water and the drag would have ripped the tail off, killing them.

Victor allows the plane to climb more and does a loop, bringing the plane back into a normal flying position just in time to bank left and take the second path.

“Fancy flying,” comes a voice from behind Victor, and when he looks behind him he bursts out laughing. Laura is trying to wiggle herself out from between the back seats where she had got stuck when Victor did the last flip, her hair is a mess and covers her right eye. She blows some air sideways out of her mouth to get the hair out of her face, but it just drops back down. She finally gets herself free and climbs over to her seat again.

Victor still has the plane banking left to follow the valley, the left wing is skimming just over the water and the right wing is over the river bank, close to the forest.

“Tree!”

Victor is concentrating on the left wing when Laura yells. Looking right he sees a large tree right on the water’s edge, directly in the right wing’s path.

He banks more to the left while trying to gently pull the plane up. The tip of the left wing dips into the water, making a wake behind them.

The right wing hits the top of the tree and breaks a few small branches, trimming the top of the tree. Gently Victor lifts the left wing up as soon as they clear the tree, pulling the tip of the wing out of the water.

“That was close, shall we not do that again,” Laura comments, then climbs back under the dash.

Checking the fuse box, she finds the blown fuse and replaces it with a spare that is in the fuse box lid.

Victor tries the GPS and this time it works. Laura sits back into her seat and then leans over and gives Victor a quick kiss on the cheek.

“Thanks for not crashing.” Victor gives her a wink as reply.

Ten minutes and four more turns later, the valley opens up and they can see for miles. The valley floor is at 5000 feet and Victor cruises at 7000 feet. On the GPS Victor notes that Vilcabamba is just up ahead.

“Is that Vilcabamba down there?” Laura asks, pointing to some ruins to their right.

“No, Vilcabamba is still three miles away, I do not know what ruins those are, let’s take a closer look.” Victor is already descending while banking right. Below they can make out a road used by tourists that runs from Vilcabamba up ahead, passing the ruins. No one even knows they are passing more ruins by only 300 feet when using the road, the jungle is so dense.

They can make out scattered buildings and what looks like a large structure, partly obscured by the forest.

“Is that what I think it is?” Laura asks eagerly, her face full of excitement.

“Looks like it, let me turn around for another pass and go lower this time.”

“Can we fly over Vilcabamba as you circle around?” Laura wants to make sure that there are no other objects the same as they just spotted. Victor makes a large turn, flying low over the ruins of Vilcabamba. There are a few tourists around, looking up at the plane going over them. Three men sitting in an old Willis army jeep look up in wonder.

“Some tourists just do not have the stomach for a close up encounter with the jungle, getting a few mosquito bites is probably too much excitement for them to handle. Bet you they are a bunch of city slickers,” one says. They all laugh together then ignore the plane, continuing to study a map of the ruins.

Victor flies the plane as slow as possible over the newly discovered ruins.

“It is, we’ve found it!” Laura yells in excitement as they pass by a massive stone statue of a jaguar, right in front of a building. The direction to the hidden treasure indicated that the entrance is guarded by “Tepeyollotl” who is believed to be the god of caves. The Aztecs and Incas depicted him as a jaguar in all their drawings and made statues of jaguars to worship “Tepeyollotl”. His name means “heart of the mountain”.

“We can land the plane on the road and leave it in that open area next to the road there,” Victor says as he points to a small open area next to the road.

He circles the plane around and brings her in line with the dirt road. Easing off the throttle he slows the plane down to almost stalling speed, making the distance needed to land shorter.

The plane could land and take off in only 800 feet, of which Victor has plenty more road, but he fears pot holes that can damage the suspension or cause the plane to flip over. The faster he brings the plane to a stop, the safer.

As Victor expertly lands the plane, the three men at Vilcabamba stare in wonder.

“You reckon they know something we do not?” Anthony asks. He is a slender 6 foot Italian, an ex mafia hit man with brown hair and gray eyes, well tanned with an athletic build, weighing about 200 pounds. He was selected to serve as navigator for the group as he knows the most about Peru and its ruins, due to having visited them multiple times as a child with his parents.

“Maybe a private VIP tour of ruins not on the map?” Morne asks, who is a rough, unshaven ex South African Special Forces sergeant, then known as “Rekkies”, who had turned gun for hire. He has short cut dark blond hair with blue eyes that constantly reflect his hate towards the world, and looks as if he belonged in a body building commercial for steroids.

He used to be loving, but after his parents were murdered on their farm while he was in the service, he decided to become a mercenary and take his hate out on others while being paid for it.

Morne used to brag that he once forgot his pant’s belt in camp, so caught a Green Mamba snake and used it as a belt to hold his pants up with the snake still alive, knotted at the head.

He was brought on the team as security and intelligence gathering due to his special way of extracting information from people, sharing many of his interrogation techniques with Victor.

“Could be just what we have been looking for all along,” Boris comments, who is a stocky, slightly overweight Russian, who works for a secret branch of the Russian intelligence, doing work that is too sensitive even for the Russian intelligence to handle. He and Russtoff were comrades and had received their training together. He was chosen to lead the small group whose orders are to assist Russtoff and find the scrolls.

“Shall we go and have a look, Boss?” Morne is eager to get the job over with, he has not killed anyone in days and is getting bored walking around looking at ruins. The only thing that interests him about ruins is if he can make them himself with mortars, hopefully with people still in the buildings.

“No, not now, we will go tomorrow, they should fly out later today. I do not want anyone else to go sniffing around there by following us over.”

Expertly Victor lands the plane and taxies it into the open area. Looking around the plane for tools to take with, they find two machetes, a survival Rambo type knife, a small hand shovel, and a Ruger SR22 .22 caliber pistol with ten rounds in its magazine.

“Seems like Jose likes camping out,” Laura comments.

Victor locks the plane and they make their way over the road to the jungle in the direction of the ruins.

The first 100 feet are relatively easy going, with only occasional soft scrubs blocking their way. Victor cuts a path open for them while Laura follows.

The forest progressively gets denser and denser, slowing them down. Laura has to help cut vines and branches down to allow them to make any meaningful forward progress.

After two hours they come to the first ruin. It is a stone wall 6 feet high with an archway as an entrance. There are vines growing all over the wall and inside the archway.

When they manage to clear the opening they pass through the entrance and find to their surprise a large clearing about 100 by 80 feet in size. Although there are leaves on the soft muddy ground, there are no large trees growing there and the small shrubs and bushes seem to have been cleared not too long ago.

Victor can make out more ruins in the bush behind the clearing, he counts the outlines of at least three buildings, all covered in moss and vines.

“We will rest here a bit,” Victor says, pushing the point of the machete into the ground, and drops his backpack to the ground. He removes some water and snacks that he had bought at the beach shop and saved for a time like this.

“What’s the plan?” Laura takes some water and a Snickers bar from Victor as she speaks.

“We will search the surroundings later and return to the plane at night. We have enough water for two days and if we go sparingly, snacks as well. If we find the treasure we will take the scrolls and fly out. Else we will fly and get more supplies and return to renew our search.” Victor sits down on the ground as he speaks.

Laura takes a sip of her water and replies, “Do we have enough fuel to make it back to Jose?”

“No, we have only enough to fly to the small airport where we can refuel and get more water then return. I can hunt small animals for food if we need to stay, else we will then return to Colombia and Jose where we can get a commercial flight out.”

Victor does not like the area, but they have no choice, they need to search for the lost treasure and scrolls, and this is as good a place as any to start.

“If this is the place where the treasure is hidden, it makes sense why neither the Spanish nor anyone else after them ever found the treasure. Vilcabamba is miles away. In addition, Manco Inca killed all that worked on burying the treasure by having them placed in the front ranks defending his city on the last stand. No one remained alive to tell about the real location of the treasure, except the two Spanish that saw the stone statue but had no idea where in the jungle they actually were.”

Laura says, as she picks up her machete and makes for the far left corner of the clearing, “I’ll start clearing a path on this side, you take another corner, and if we’re lucky we may find the statue before nightfall.”

Victor nods then adds, “Yell if you find it or need help, let’s be back in two hours.” Laura gives him a wink as she hops away towards the jungle, full of excitement of searching for hidden treasures in the jungle at an ancient forgotten city.

The going is slow and hard work. Laura had an easier time than Victor with less jungle growth.

An hour and a half later Victor decides to turn around. He had found some ruins, but nothing that looked like it could be a passage to an underground hidden room and he could find no trace of the statue.

He decides that he will continue on this path the next day when they return to the clearing. When Victor reaches the clearing he looks around but there is no sign of Laura. He decides to follow the path she had taken. Just as he starts to enter the jungle they meet, Laura returning, tired and sweating.

“Wow, this is hard work, but so exciting.” She is glowing with joy.

“Shall we return to the plane for the night?” Victor more suggests than asks.

“Oh, can we sleep in the jungle tonight? You can make us a camp fire; it will be so romantic, please?” Laura bats her eyelids at Victor as she speaks.

“You are not afraid of the jungle night life?”

“A little, but you’ll protect me, right?” Laura feels Victor’s biceps as she speaks. Victor just laughs at her as he turns to get some firewood, squeezing her bum as he walks away.