The God Complex: A Thriller (22 page)

The small corporate jet touched down just after midnight local time. Steve opened the DIS folder. Cusco was home to 350,000 people, elevation 11,152 feet above sea level, a world heritage site and was once the center of the Incan Empire. The detail continued with a full demographic breakdown and history of the city. However, none of it was the least bit helpful. The only relevant piece of information was that it was 47 miles from Machu Picchu.

“
We’ve got a second chance to take these guys.” Steve looked across at Charlie, her face flushing red. “Let’s make sure we don’t fuck it up again,” he said, staring into her eyes. He had had to abandon his wife in the middle of an anniversary dinner when the job came through; an anniversary dinner that would have been fine if Charlie had remembered the sex of her fake baby. If she had, these guys would already be dead and no job would have come through.

“Maybe if we stuck to Charlene…”

“I’d remember I’m a girl?” she asked. He had pushed her too far. She had apologized during the entire flight to no avail. His shitty mood wasn’t lifting.

“Boss, Charlie gets the point,” said Zach.

“Yeah, boss,” said Liam, the fourth and final member of the team.

Steve looked at his three young protégés, all plucked directly from the forces, unlike himself
, who was former forces and CIA. They may have lacked the investigative and analytical skills he had picked up from the agency, but he wouldn’t want anyone else by his side when the shit hit the fan. They were exceptional soldiers.

“I’m sorry, it was a big night
. Our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary,” he explained. “Anyway, we’ve got to get there ASAP, this is their most likely destination.”

His team didn’t need any further orders
. They grabbed their kits and headed to the door of the jet, following him down and out, straight to the taxi rank.

“Machu Picchu,” said Steve to one of only two taxis waiting outside the airport.

The driver looked at Steve and his three companions eagerly waiting by his side and laughed.

“Machu Picchu
? You can’t drive there, you need to catch a train,” said the driver.

“So take us
to the train.”

“Next train’s
at 6:00 a.m.”

Steve checked his watch
. “12:15 a.m.”

“Helicopter?”

“Not allowed, train or trek.”

The other taxi driver had wandered over
. There was little else going on. He had overheard the conversation. “There’s the 5:07 from Sacred Valley. It’s the first train of the day and the quickest.”

“Fine
, take us there!”

“It’s
a two-hour drive and at this time of night—”

“I don’t care how much it costs!”

Charlie was looking up the train times on her smart phone. “He’s right, the Sacred Valley train gets in at 6.34, long before the train from Cusco.”

“
Pile in, we’ll take both taxis,” said Steve, calculating in his mind how he would have had more than enough time to have his anniversary dinner and still flown down in time to catch the early train. His mood darkened again.

Cash woke up when the first hint of sunlight crept through the window. Their flight from Bolivia had taken just under an hour the previous evening and, thanks to his father’s research, had highlighted the best place to stay. It had taken some time to get there but it had been worth it. The Machu Picchu Sanctuary Lodge was a luxury hotel a few hundred yards from the ruins.

Cash jumped in the shower
. When he was out and dressed and hearing no signs of life from either of his companions’ rooms, he headed out into the fresh morning air. The sun’s rays were beginning to peek over the mountain ranges that loomed all around sending shards of light shooting down into the valley below. Cash walked across to the entrance of the ruins. The ticketing office and entrance were unmanned. The first bus from the valley below wasn’t due for another forty-five minutes.

He wandered on into the ruins
. The terraces cut down the mountainside below him, revealing layers of farming ground, with many structures sitting along the ridge. Similar to the ruins at Pumapunka and Tiwanaku, the stonework was stunning. The lower layers of the buildings featured stones carved so precisely that they sat together without the need for mortar. Their size defied the location. Huge stones, carved to perfection, which would have been transported thousands of feet up a sheer mountainside. Water flowed through perfectly carved channels following Cash as he walked along the length of the ruins.

He closed his eyes, the silence interrupted only by the water
running through the channels, as had been planned centuries earlier.

“Cash?” came a shout from up ahead.

He opened his eyes. Sophie was waving at him from the farthest most part of the ruins. She must have been up before him. He walked over to meet her, marveling at the ornately carved stone that protruded from the ground.

“The Intihuantana,” she said
. “It’s part of another astronomical calendar.”

Cash looked out across the mountains that surrounded them
. “It’s an amazing place.”

“Lost for
five hundred years and only rediscovered in 1911,” she said, packing her gear away.

“So it’s
five hundred years old?” asked Cash.

“Some of it
, but not all of it. Your father guessed far older, certainly the earlier structures. You may have noticed a difference in the construction.”

“Yeah,” nodded Cash
. “The lower stones are larger and cut precisely, the higher stones are far smaller and nowhere near as well cut.”

“Exactly, it seems the builders got worse as time progressed and tools advanced
,” she said sarcastically.

“Any idea how old?”

Sophie shook her head and attempted to hoist her bag onto her shoulder. He caught it and put it over his.

“Where next?” he asked.

“I’m done,” she said, yawning.

“How can you be done, you said you needed a few hours here!”

She yawned again. “Yep, and like I said, all done.”

“You didn’t go to bed
?”

“I tried but it was such a beautiful clear night and my mind was racing. I’m taking measurements that relate to astronomy, when better than at night
?”

Cash looked around
, a bit disgruntled. “What if they’re watching us?” Sophie pointed along the pathway that led back out of the far side of the ruins, gently sloping towards the peak that overlooked the ruins. A hundred yards away, with a bird’s eye view of the entire site, sat Rigs, half hidden amongst the undergrowth.

“One of my protectors is obviously a little more on the ball!”

Cash waved at Rigs to come down and join them.

“How long’s he been there?”

“All night. Not said a word, just watched me like a hawk.”

“Menacing?” asked Cash apologetically.

“I must be getting used to him. It was quite comforting to know he was there!”

The sound of engines straining reached across to them, quickly followed by a rush of voices. The tourists had arrived
. The local buses transported a mass of commercialism up an impossibly steep slope. It was not a journey any of them were looking forward to repeating in daylight; it had been scary enough when they couldn’t fully appreciate the drop.

The bird call went unnoticed by Sophie but had Cash on his toes in an instant. He grabbed Sophie and ducked behind the wall that obscured their view back towards the entrance. Rigs followed his call at a low run, tucking his binoculars back into this pack.

“The mother from the hotel elevator!” he said urgently, indicating off towards the entrance, a couple of hundred yards away.

Sophie
tried to look but was pulled back by Cash.

“He doesn’t mean this hotel or an actual mother! It’s one of the killers from Santa Cruz
.”

“Oh my
God!” said Sophie. “It
is
linked!” she almost shouted with excitement.

Cash covered her mouth
. He had already concluded the same the second Rigs had issued the warning call. They were being hunted.

“
That means she’s one of the guardians!” whispered Sophie. “Protectors of the secret!”

“I doubt it,” mumbled Rigs to Cash, raising a smile.

“What?” asked Sophie.

“Later,” promised Cash.

“We need to speak to her!” Sophie insisted.

“She’s here to kill us!”

“She’s here to kill
you two
,” corrected Sophie. “They’ve not seen me with you.” She was up and moving before they realized what she was going to do, out in the open for all to see. If either Cash or Rigs went near her, they’d expose her as being with them, tantamount to painting a target on her.

“Shit!” said Cash through his teeth
when she evaded his diving grasp while Rigs strained to see around the wall without giving away their presence.

“I spot another two with her, they’re scoping out the area. They
don’t think we’re here yet.”

“They did arrive on the first bus,” mused Cash
. “They probably don’t know we stayed at the local hotel. Or didn’t think we could have since they knew we weren’t in Peru last night, so they must have known we were in Bolivia.”

“A leak?” asked Rigs
. “They’re not at all interested in Sophie. They’ve not given her a second look.”

Cash looked over the edge of the building that they were hunkered down in, it was a sheer drop down to a terrace twenty feet below. The terraces ran along the length of the ruins.

“If we drop down, we can keep tight against the wall and make our way back to the entrance.”

Rigs opened up his small backpack
. His Kimber ICQB pistol sat on top, a silencer by its side. He withdrew the silencer and screwed it in place.

“Or we kill them now,” suggested Rigs, offering Cash the pistol
while withdrawing a 12-inch Mission MPK-T1 knife from the inside of his boot.

Cash stole a look around the wall. The three had spread out
. Sophie was wandering as aimlessly as she could, although to Cash, it looked anything but, towards the girl.

“I’ll take the guy in the
gray t-shirt,” Cash said. “You take the olive shirt.”

They
moved without another word. Cash dropped down to the terrace below, his landing timed and planned not only to minimize the chance of injury but noise. He had the advantage of the pistol, so his route to his kill was far simpler than for Rigs, who needed to get up close and personal.

Rigs rolled across the gap to the adjacent building and worked his way along the extensive ruins, which offered excellent cover for him. Unfortunately
, the olive shirt had moved away from the ruins and had opted to walk down the sacred plaza, a large open area, out of striking distance.

Charlie caught sight of the woman who appeared from the ruins ahead of them. Initially she had thought nothing of it, but soon realized the woman was keeping an eye on where Charlie was heading and was trying to engineer a route to cross her path.

“The woman off to my right, just under a hundred yards,” said Charlie quietly
. Each of the team was wearing a tiny state of the art ear piece mic. “She’s working her way towards me.”

“They’re here
, guys. Be on alert,” Steve responded. “Charlie, good spot.”

Zach, wearing an olive colored t-shirt
, moved away from the ruins he had been admiring and stuck to open ground. His eyes desperately tracked any movement from where the woman had suddenly appeared.

“Liam, anything?” asked Steve
. Liam was off to Charlie’s right, skirting the edge of the ruins.

“I can see the woman clearly but neither of the targets,” replied Liam.

Cash heard the voice above. He edged out from the terrace wall and caught a glimpse of the
gray t-shirt. He pulled himself in tight against the face of the wall. Gray T-Shirt would have to lean out over the edge to be able to see him. There were steps off to his right that would take him back to the main level, up and behind the man. He couldn’t risk a shot without knowing where Sophie was in relation to the woman.

Cash edged quickly along the wall and crept up the staircase, keeping his head a
s low as possible. When he reached floor height, he looked along to Gray T-Shirt thirty yards away, hugging the edge of the ruins.

“Movement behind you, boss!” said Liam urgently into the earpiece. “Coming up from the terrace below. I don’t have a shot! I repeat, I don’t have a shot!”

Steve didn’t wait to react
. He dove into the body of the ruins almost instantaneously. Cash’s reactive shot whistled past his ankle.

“I have the shot!” said Liam