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  It wasn’t a question of solving the puzzle of regeneration. That, to an extent, had been accomplished. It was the effects of regeneration on the mind. For Hydra to have survived into adulthood, a sound mind would have been required. True, it was probably an unintelligent creature, but the negative effects of regeneration that he had witnessed so far caused severe reactions even in the dumbest of creatures. Hydra must have had certain genes that blocked or negated this effect. The idea normally sent his mind spinning, but right now all he could think of was sleep.

  Maddox sat on his office couch, which more often than not served as his bed, covered up with a lab coat and closed his eyes. A few more tests out of the thousands already run would garner little useful information. But a rested mind combined with the prize soon to be plucked from the U.N.’s grasp might just unlock the secrets to immortality.

  Then again, maybe not.

  He opened his eyes and sighed. Sleep would not come. He climbed off the couch and shuffled toward the office exit, pausing at the desk to pilfer some caffeine pills from a drawer. He popped two in his mouth and resumed his slow journey back to the lab. There was always time for a few more tests.

  5

  Nazca, Peru, two days later

  King smiled as the dry desert air whipping past pulled the moisture away from his body as quick as he could sweat it out. The intensely flat plains made driving an open-air jeep at ninety-five miles an hour irresistible, and he found himself enjoying what he thought would be a very boring trip. The same could not be said for his skittish passenger, his driver, Atahualpa—the man who was supposed to be behind the wheel of the old brown jeep.

  Atahualpa now wished he hadn’t accepted King’s twenty dollars, but work for people of Incan descent was in short supply these days. He typically ferried tourists out into the desert on sightseeing tours, but they didn’t pay well because fierce competition drove the prices down. The occasional science expedition paid better, and still other, less savory clients, paid even more handsomely. But work during the summer months slowed to a trickle drier than the sands, and twenty dollars extra, just to sit in the passenger seat, had been impossible to pass up. The only other benefit he saw to King driving is that they would arrive at their destination in half the time, though he knew arriving too early sometimes created complications as well, and his fare was already a full day ahead of schedule. He’d been assured the accelerated timing wouldn’t be a problem, but King struck him as a dangerous man to cross, and that made him more nervous than the jeep’s speed.

  Glancing down at the GPS guide attached to the dashboard—the only hint of modern technology in the jeep—King could see they were approaching the heritage site base camp. He eased up on the gas and laughed when Atahualpa’s body relaxed. The old Incan had probably never driven so fast. Try a HALO jump, he thought, then you’ll really understand speed.

  They’d been able to see the lone hill from miles away, but as it grew taller, King could make out a line of white, U.N.-emblazoned tents atop the mesa-like hilltop. How anyone could be so brazen as to try looting such an obviously large operation was beyond him. Of course, they were an hour’s drive from the nearest village and help would be a long time coming. But really, how valuable could Nazcan artifacts be?

  If not for King’s trust in Pierce’s judgment, he’d never have agreed to spend his leave-time in the middle of nowhere. His ideal break included a cross-country motorcycle trek, the occasional hangover, and at least the potential for a romantic fling. Protecting a bunch of history geeks in a dry, windless desert had never been high on his list of things to do. Still, he’d left a day early, eager to see his old friend. If not for the accident that took his sister’s life, this visit would have been a family occasion, not just two old friends reuniting.

  The jeep slowed considerably as King drove it up the hill’s steep incline, making sure to stay within the tire tracks of the vehicles that had preceded them. Pierce had briefed him on all the protocols for protecting the delicate environment surrounding the new World-Heritage site. At the top of the list: minimal human impact. That included keeping tire tracks to a minimum. The origins of most lines crisscrossing the plains could be traced back to modern vehicles, which often cut through the original ancient geoglyphs, sometimes before the glyphs had been discovered, sometimes long afterward.

  He drove between a pair of tents and parked in the center of camp, far away from the other parked vehicles. Not a single person came to greet them or find out why they were there. They really have no security, he thought. He shut the jeep off and listened.

  Nothing.

  No people. No wind. No life.

  The place was as still and quiet as the moon’s surface.

  King jumped out of the jeep, unzipped his backpack, and pulled out his .45 caliber Sig Sauer p220 handgun. He snuck the gun into Peru by taking an army flight headed to one of the three radar stations the U.S. manned. He’d had to rush to make the flight, but it’d been worth it. If he was walking into a fight with armed looters, his raised palms wouldn’t intimidate them much. The handgun clip held only seven bullets, but the .45 caliber rounds had massive stopping power. If the target still stood with seven rounds in him, a wooden stake and holy water might be the next best weapons of choice. He slapped in a clip and chambered the first round.

  He held an open hand at Atahualpa, who nodded vigorously, never taking his eyes off the ominous handgun. The empty base camp combined with his suddenly raised hackles frightened the man. He’d seen enough people shot in the desert to know that help never arrived soon enough.

  Moving methodically, letting his weapon lead the way, King worked his way through the small camp, peeking into tents, checking out cars, and looking for signs of a struggle. He found nothing.

  An organic murmur tickled his ears. He spun, searching for the source, but found nothing more than Atahualpa’s frightened eyes. He pointed to his ear and made a quizzical expression.

  Atahualpa cocked his head to the side, listening. He began shaking his head, no, but then stopped as the odd noise rose in volume. He nodded and ducked lower in the seat.

  The noise sounded human, but more like a group of people buried beneath the sand. Atahualpa sat up suddenly and pointed over the far side of the hill, opposite from where they had come. The man had good ears.

  King headed for the side of the hill, using a pickup truck for cover. He still couldn’t see anyone, but the sound came much clearer now. Definitely a lot of people, but were they in pain? Several voices were high-pitched, almost frantic. He rounded the pickup and spun over the edge of the hill, still leading with his weapon, which came to a stop right between the eyes of a chubby local woman. “¡Oh Dios! No disparen!”

  King lowered the weapon quickly. Twenty-odd people were gathered on the hillside, all looking down. Several looked back because of the woman’s shouting, but he had tucked the gun into his pants at the small of his back. “Lo siento,”he apologized in Spanish. Delta operators were required to speak several languages. As Spanish was the fourth most spoken language in the world, learning it made sense. He could also speak Arabic and Mandarin. “Pense que estaba en peligro. Saqueadores. Soy amigo del Doctor Pierce. Por favor, ¿donde esta el?”

  The shaken woman didn’t reply. He took her gently by the shoulders and smiled at her. “Please,” he said, switching back to English. “Where is Dr. Pierce? I am Jack Sigler. His friend. He was expecting me.”

  “Jack Sigler.” The woman nodded, recognition filling her eyes and pointed down the hill, past the sitting workers, and said, “La cabeza del dragon.”

  The dragon’s head?

  King began to wonder if the woman had heatstroke, but then he followed her shaky extended finger, looked past the sitting workers and saw the dragon. Even upside down, the massive drawing in the sand looked intimidating. Far in the distance he could make out its sharp, pointed toes and thick body. Rising out of the body were nine necks, each jutting out at a slightly varied angle, four on each side and on
e up the middle, like a neatly arranged vase of flowers. At staggering heights, the necks bent ninety degrees and ended with serpentine heads. The central neck shot straight toward the hill, ending at a large domed stone. This was the object that held the group’s attention.

  The earth around the base of the large stone was covered in small piles of sand. A large tunnel had been dug beneath the stone. Though the hole was cast in darkness, a shifting light moved within. Pierce was under the dragon’s head, looking for the artifact he thought might cause looters to descend on the site.

  “Gracias,” he said to the woman.

  She just turned and walked quickly away, mumbling to herself.

  Moving like he belonged among the waiting workers, King strode down the hill, doing his best not to frighten anyone else. But he saw the sideways glances cast in his direction and heard the nervous chatter after he passed. Seeing the dusty, outdoorsy garb the workers wore, both locals and imported, he realized just how out of place he looked. His scruffy black hair that stuck up like Hugh Jackman’s portrayal of Wolverine on a bad hair day coupled with his black cargo pants and tight, black Elvis T-shirt was apparently not hip fashion for archaeology sites.

  As a cumulative murmur of concern rose up behind him, he shouted for Pierce in his best playful voice. “Hey, George, you in there?”

  King stopped at the tunnel entrance, noticing the odd-looking inscription carved into the stone above the hole. He put his face over the hole and shouted, “Hello. Anybody ho—”

  Pierce shot out of the hole, his face only inches from King’s. King jumped back, earnestly startled.

  “Thought you military types didn’t scare so easily,” Pierce said with a smile, but the smile struck King as odd, almost forced. Something had shaken Pierce up.

  “I’ve looked into a lot of dark holes and seen a lot of awful things, but your ugly mug has them all beat,” King said, trying to keep the mood light. But when Pierce’s rigid smile disappeared he could see the mood in the excavated space would be as heavy as the stone atop it looked.

  Pierce waved him down. “I guarantee you; you’ve never seen anything as gruesome as this.” He slid back into the tunnel. “We just entered a few minutes ago.”

  With a last glance at the group of onlookers, King felt a twinge of apprehension. Whatever had been buried beneath the stone was long since dead. Dead things didn’t bother him. It was the people outside he didn’t trust. He looked over the crowd and saw only kind and interested eyes. Atop the hill he saw Atahualpa watching. He gave him a wave. Atahualpa gave a halfhearted wave back, then turned and walked away.

  Probably still shaken up from my driving, King thought with a grin. After a tour-foot crawl he entered a small chamber lit by a single battery-powered lantern.

  As King’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, the scene resolved around him like a Polaroid picture. His mouth opened along with his dilating pupils.

  “What...happened to them?”

  6

  Nazca, Peru

  Twisted limbs and gnarled faces leaped out of the dark, more shocking and horrible than any hack-and-slash horror movie King had ever seen. The bodies were not only more gruesome than the imaginings of even the sickest Hollywood mind, but they were also very real. The eye sockets were sunken, but not empty. Each contained an off-white, dry orb that was surrounded by dark tan skin stretched tight like overworked leather. In some places, the ancient skin had ripped, revealing jawbone, ribs, or pelvis. Dried clothing lay in tatters on the dirt floor around the bodies, the natural fibers having rotted and fallen long ago.

  King peeled his gaze away from the twenty-odd corpses lying about in the seven-foot-deep, ten-foot-wide hollow. Pierce stood at the center of the space next to an older woman he recognized from photos Pierce e-mailed him; Molly McCabe. “George, this is...”

  “Disturbing,” McCabe finished. She held her hand out to him. “Molly McCabe.”

  “Exactly,” King said, then shook her offered hand. “Jack Sigler.”

  As to your question, what happened here is what we’re trying to figure out.”

  King returned his attention to the corpses surrounding them. Something awful had transpired here long ago.

  “Near as we can tell,” George said. “They were buried alive.”

  King knelt down and inspected two of the petrified cadavers, making sure not to touch anything. “And dehydrated.”

  “Mummified by the extreme dry heat,” George said. “They’ve been perfectly preserved, in situ, from the day they died.”

  King leaned forward, staring at a mummified head that had been crushed flat on top. “How do you know they were alive?”

  George pointed to the dimly lit ceiling where several dark lines crisscrossed the surface.

  “Blood,” King said, recognizing the dark hue. “They tried to claw their way out.”

  “There are finger gouges all around the edges, too,” McCabe said. “But they probably suffocated fairly quickly after the entrance was sealed.”

  “Some of them were dead before then,” King said.

  McCabe looked surprised, “How do you know?”

  King smiled and pointed to three of the bodies. “Crushed skulls. All three of them. Either they had their heads bashed in before they were buried...”

  “Or?” George asked as he ran a finger along the jagged edge of one of the crushed skulls.

  King stood and took the lantern from George. He held it up to the stone ceiling above one of the flat-headed men, revealing a splotch of color matching the scratch marks. “Or,” he said, “this rock was dropped on top of them. Those with slow reaction times died quickly. From the looks of it, they got off easy.”

  McCabe crossed her arms. “I know you’re here for security, but what exactly is your experience that you’re so sure about what happened here?”

  “Just spent a lot of time around dead people,” he said, deflating McCabe’s curiosity. “Figuring out how someone died is second nature now.”

  “There’s no way,” Pierce said, ignoring King’s comment. “This rock must weigh...unless...” He rubbed his eyebrow and turned away, deep in thought.

  “Well,” McCabe said to King, forcing confidence back into her voice. “Given your...experience with gruesome crime scenes, perhaps you’ll be more useful than a hired gun?”

  King lowered the lantern and held it out so he could see Pierce again. “Speaking of that...why would you need security for a bunch of dead bodies? They can’t be worth much to looters. What did you think was down here?”

  Pierce snapped out of his thoughts and met King’s eyes. “Not what do I think. What do I know.” He stepped aside revealing what looked like a gray stone on the floor of the hollow. It’s what they had been looking at when King entered through the small tunnel.

  King looked down at the object, hardly impressed. “Looks like a rock.”

  “Look closer,” Pierce said.

  He knelt down and examined the object’s surface. It looked like concrete, but more flaky. He could see a slight crisscross pattern, like some kind of fabric. Then he noted the shape—large on one end tapering down to the other, like some kind of animal’s head. As his imagination set to work, the details came to life. On the small end, a pair of rises looked like a snout. Halfway to the top, another set of bumps looked like eye sockets. He stepped back and looked at it as a whole. “Looks like some kind of head. Like a giant snake head.”

  “A two-foot-long snake head?” McCabe asked.

  He looked at Pierce and shrugged. “A prehistoric snake?”

  “Something much more ominous,” Pierce said.

  King began to reply, but paused as a rise of voices filtered through the tunnel entrance, indiscernible, but clearly growing in volume.

  “The natives are restless,” McCabe said, then turned to Pierce. “You can tell him all about your theory after we get that thing out of here. I’ll go settle down the crew.”

  Pierce looked through the tunnel but only saw blue sky a
bove. “They probably just want to know what we found.”

  McCabe stopped in front of the tunnel. Ignoring the circle of bodies, McCabe forced a halfhearted smile. “Think you two strapping young men can handle that?”

  “We’ll take care of it,” George said.

  King nodded as he moved toward the petrified head. He’d seen scenes like this fresh with smoldering blood, flesh, and bullets. It disturbed him to think that atrocities like this happened so long ago; he’d always hoped that at some point in man’s past there was peace, but here was evidence again that mankind could be as horrible as any monster conjured by the imagination. He wouldn’t lose any sleep over this scene, but he took no joy in being desensitized to death.

  Pierce took a large empty satchel from over his shoulder and opened it up in front of the artifact. “Lift up this end and I’ll slide the bag over it.”

  King lifted the head. It was a lot heavier than it looked. King grunted from exertion.

  Pierce slid the bag over the head, covering two thirds of the object. King placed it back on the floor of the cave, suddenly craving a drink from his few seconds of work. How anyone could have spent the time and energy to create the line drawing above was beyond him. Even here in the shade, the air was still plenty hot and dry enough to wither a man until he looked like a raisin.

  Pierce took the satchel strap and dragged the object toward the tunnel. “Let’s get out of this sweat lodge and catch up over a beer. I’ll tell you all about our little friend here, too. I’ll pull, you push.”