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  Kates set a fast pace on the return trip and would have gone faster if that hadn’t meant leaving the comforting beam of the flashlight behind. They emerged into daylight again to find everyone else standing outside the entrance, varying expressions of anxiety and excitement on their faces. “What did you find?” Rick asked. He was one of the excited ones, all but jumping up and down.

  “Nothing,” Kates said.

  Rick’s face fell. “Nothing?”

  “Nothing yet,” Jillian said firmly. “We didn’t go far.”

  “All right, everybody, back out,” Ben said. “We’re jammed up in here like sardines. Let’s get some space and plan what we’re going to do.”

  What they were going to do was simple. He had done some fast thinking while they were inside the tunnel. On the chance that they might have found the Stone City, he didn’t intend to leave Jillian behind at the mercy of either Kates or Dutra. Where he went, she went. They couldn’t carry the litters through there because of the twists and turns, but would have no trouble negotiating the corridor with backpacks in place. The loads were swiftly broken down and redistributed, almost weighing the men down. He hoped it wouldn’t be a long trek through the tunnel.

  He roped everyone together by the simple method of running the rope through a belt loop—a problem with Pepe and Eulogio, since they didn’t have belt loops, but Jillian provided some safety pins and they improvised. Jillian insisted on carrying a small pack slung around her right shoulder, wanting to do what she could, and everyone carried a flashlight.

  With the Glock firmly in his right fist and the shotgun within reach, Ben led them back into the tunnel. He had no idea what they would find. The tunnel might be a dead end, or it could be blocked by a landslide. Anything was possible.

  Jillian transferred her flashlight to her left hand and surreptitiously slid her own pistol out of the pack on her shoulder. She had made certain it was close at hand.

  Ben went first, followed by Jillian, with Pepe behind her. Pepe seemed very nervous about the proceedings, but she suspected it was the closeness of the tunnel that got to him. The more stolid Eulogio was merely interested, rather than fearful.

  Sound echoed so severely, reverberating in their ears, that everyone quickly learned to whisper.

  She estimated they had gone at least a quarter of a mile when the tunnel abruptly sloped upward, with wide, shallow steps that seemed to have been carved out of the stone. It wasn’t a steep slope, but it took a toll on the men, since they were carrying so much extra weight.

  The air became even cooler, and Jillian shivered. Ben’s flashlight picked out nothing but more of the same. “How much farther can it go on?” she wondered aloud.

  “The way it’s twisting and turning, I’d imagine for quite a way. As long as we can feel that breeze, I’m not worried. There’s fresh air coming in somewhere.”

  The endless darkness was unnerving. She wondered how spelunkers learned not only to tolerate the sensation of being buried in the bowels of the earth and to endure the oppressive darkness, but to actually enjoy it. This wasn’t for her.

  The tunnel evened out again, and Ben called a short break for them to catch their breath. After ten minutes he had them going again.

  Jillian had noted the time when they entered the tunnel. She turned her wrist so the flashlight shone on the watch face. They had been walking for fifty-four minutes, minus the ten-minute break—say, forty-five minutes. If they had been setting a fast pace that would have translated to about three miles, but even at their slower rate she estimated they had gone two miles, at least. This was some tunnel. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to cut it out of the heart of the mountain, though it was possible nature had begun the effort and man—or woman—had simply enlarged what was already there.

  “Here we go again,” Ben said, and they started climbing another series of wide, shallow steps. Each step was probably no more than an inch or so higher than the one before, but hundreds of them added up, both in height and in the effort it took to climb them.

  Then suddenly they turned a curve and there was light ahead. Dim light, barely distinguishable, but there. As they neared, they could see that this opening was overgrown every bit as much as the other one had been, covered by thick lianas and bushes. This entrance was as wide as the tunnel itself, but there was still room for only one man when that one man was swinging a machete. Ben set his backpack down and began slashing with the lethal, razor-edged weapon, hacking their way out of the tunnel with brute force. The sunlight poured in, brighter and brighter.

  Then they were outside again, pushing aside broad leaves that slapped at their faces, slicing away trailing vines. After the darkness of the tunnel they had to shade their eyes until their vision could adjust to the sunshine.

  What they saw looked pretty much like what had been on the other end of the tunnel.

  “Now what?” Rick asked in disgust. “Where do we go from here?”

  Jillian was turning around and around. They seemed to be in a kind of bowl, with rock walls encircling them. Her trained eye picked out detail after detail, and a swelling sensation grew in her chest until she thought she would burst. She caught Ben’s eye, and knew that he had seen the same things, but suddenly he was looking dead serious while she wanted to whoop and scream her delight.

  “We don’t go anywhere,” she finally managed to say, her voice shaking with strain. “We’re here. We’ve found the Stone City.”

  14

  Rick looked around again. “This is it?” he demanded, obviously disappointed.

  “Unless I miss my guess,” she said. There was no guess to it; she knew what she was seeing. The stone walls surrounding them were honeycombed with chambers. The entrances had long ago been overtaken by the jungle, but she could still make out shapes and a certain regularity to the growth pattern of the vines.

  “So where’s this treasure you talked about?” he demanded.

  She drew a deep breath. “If there is a treasure, it could be anywhere. We might not be the only ones to have found this.”

  Kates strode forward, scowling. “What do you mean, if there’s a treasure? Why the hell do you think we came along? If you lied to us—”

  Ben was suddenly at her side. “No one knows what’s here,” he said, his tone even but underlaid with a note of menace that halted Kates. “A lot can happen in four hundred years.”

  “What do we do now?” Rick asked.

  “Make camp. That’s the most important thing. This place isn’t going anywhere, that’s for sure.”

  Jillian was almost eaten alive with impatience to start exploring, but she knew Ben was right. First they hacked out a huge clearing, putting her on tenterhooks that they might carelessly destroy some ancient artifact, but nothing went down under the flashing blades except bushes and vines and small trees. There were no extremely tall trees in the bowl, and she wondered why. There was plenty of sunlight, but the vegetation, though thick, didn’t seem to grow to any great height. The reason behind this oddity, whatever it was, was part of the differences of the Anzar, and she could barely wait to begin discovering their secrets.

  The tents were set up farther apart than they had been on the trail. She felt it too: a strange sense of security. They were safe here in this protected bowl. Ben, however, made certain her tent was placed right next to his.

  She would not have expected any wind, enclosed as they were on all sides, but a light breeze seemed to swirl continually and the air was amazingly comfortable, almost cool. It would probably be distinctly chilly at night.

  “Everyone watch where you step, please,” she begged. “There could be bowls, pots, anything, just lying around.” Any artifact would most likely be covered by hundreds of years of accumulated dirt, but she had seen them just lying on the ground, too.

  There was still plenty of light left, and after the camp was set up, Ben slipped his arm around her waist. “Take a walk with me,” he said, softly cajoling.

  She gave him a s