Treasure Hunters--Quest for the City of Gold Read online

  And then another mosquito bit me in the neck.

  Except that this time, I realized it wasn’t a blood-sucking winged insect.

  I knew it was a wooden dart dipped in something nasty.

  In a flash, I fell asleep at the wheel.

  Literally.

  The last thing I remember is toppling off the ATV seat and landing in the dirt with my head resting on a flat tire.

  CHAPTER 70

  Our great escape turned out to be not so great.

  When whatever the dart drug was wore off (around five a.m.), we all woke up to discover that we’d been chained together, with our hands cuffed behind us, at the base of an ancient Incan idol—a weird smiling guy with a slit for a mouth.

  “Was this thing here last night?” I asked through a yawn.

  “Chya,” said Tommy. “Collier wanted to chain me to it but the dude with the feathers said he couldn’t. Said it was a sacred sculpture.”

  “Who’s it supposed to be?” asked Beck, our family artiste.

  “Feather Head called him Inkarri,” said Tommy.

  “Inkarri,” said Dad pensively. That meant he was thinking about stuff. Dad does that a lot. “The statue’s presence is further proof that the Lost City of Paititi is close at hand.”

  I squirmed around a little and noticed something kind of odd.

  The old guy, the mighty Willaq Umu or whatever, the wannabe-high-priest dude, was sitting on the ground, chained to the post where Tommy had been chained. His buddy Supay was chained right beside him. The high priest wasn’t wearing his robes or his feathered hat. Just antique underpants.

  “What’s going on?” I muttered.

  “Good question,” said Dad. “I suspect Collier no longer thinks he needs those two gentlemen to help him raise Paititi from its hiding place. His ego is such that he thinks he can do it all by himself. And here is something else for us to ponder: Those dart guns that did us in last night weren’t installed by Nathan Collier or his crew. Remember, they only just discovered this site last night. There was no time for them to engineer a defensive contraption as complex as the trip-wire dart-gun artillery installation we encountered.”

  “So who put the dart-launcher things in all the rocks?” asked Tommy. “There were like a bajillion of them, all firing at once.”

  “My guess?” said Dad, looking up at the smiling idol behind us. “Inkarri’s followers. Five hundred years ago.”

  “They installed the same kind of defenses here that Beck and I discovered in that cave back at the necropolis!” I said.

  Dad nodded. “Such is my supposition.”

  “So those darts were dipped in, like, a five-hundred-year-old sleeping potion?” asked Tommy.

  “Powerful stuff,” said Storm. “But I suspect its potency has diminished over the centuries. If we had come by, oh, two hundred years ago, we’d probably all be dead right now.”

  “Great,” I said. “Another lucky break.”

  “Now if only we could stop the sun from rising,” said Beck, nodding her head toward the eastern sky, which was starting to glow golden.

  Dawn was about to break.

  So were our rib cages.

  CHAPTER 71

  I squinted at the rising sun as the silhouette of a short, stubby figure—made slightly taller by the high priest’s feathered headpiece, sitting lopsided on his head—emerged from the shadows.

  He was using the golden corncob staff as a walking stick. The stick was twice as tall as he was. He was wearing some kind of long robe or dress. It was two sizes too big for his tiny frame, so the fabric sort of puddled around his ankles.

  Nathan and Chet Collier stepped out of the darkness to flank him.

  “The sun god smiles on us this day!” said the short man in a very thick Spanish accent. “We have five hearts to choose from for our sacrificial rite of capacocha!”

  “That’s true, Señor Rojas,” said Nathan Collier, sounding like a total suck-up. “If at first we don’t succeed, we can try, try again!”

  “Shut up, Nathan,” said the man in the middle without turning to look at either Collier. “Or I will send you and your son away as I sent away your worthless soldiers of fortune.”

  “You betcha, Señor Rojas. Zipping my lip. I’m only here to help. Got the whole sacrificial rite memorized. Won’t say a word until we’re ready to go full-on capacocha.”

  “Nathan?”

  “Sí, señor?”

  “Shut! Up!”

  “Right. No problemo. Shutting up.”

  I checked out as much of the surrounding area as I could with my arms pinned behind my back. The goons were definitely gone. It was just the two Colliers; the high priest and Supay chained to Tommy’s old post; us chained to the Inkarri statue; and Señor Rojas. His name, of course, rang a bell. A very loud bell.

  “Juan Carlos Rojas,” said Dad calmly. “At long last, we meet.”

  “Yes. Too bad your wife isn’t here, Dr. Kidd. Then I could kill you all in one swell foop!”

  “You mean ‘one fell swoop,’” said Storm. “When studying English as a second language, a command of common euphemisms and expressions can prove quite useful.”

  “¡Silencio! Oh, how I wish Mrs. Kidd and that idiot Chaupi were here. I would cut out their hearts first. Dragging me to that ridiculous summit meeting at the presidential palace in Lima. Meddling in my affairs. Trying to take away what is rightfully mine.”

  “And what would that be?” asked Dad, because he’s not afraid of anybody or anything, including Supay’s knife, which Juan Carlos Rojas had just pulled out of the fancy belt tied around his shiny priest robe.

  “The rain forest!”

  “You don’t own it, Señor Rojas.”

  “Perhaps not,” he said with a grin. “But soon I will. I will own the entire country. The people of Peru will gratefully give me everything I desire!” He was sounding loonier and loonier as he gestured to the old high priest and Supay. “For I will prove to those two ignorant peasants that I, Juan Carlos Rojas, am the new sun god! I will command the Lost City of Paititi to rise from its tomb, and, with Señor Collier’s magical words and your human hearts as a sacrificial offering, it will do my bidding! After such a feat, who would dare stand in my way? When I restore Paititi to its former glory, all will call me Inkarri! They will crown me the new king of the Incas! I will rule the rain forest!”

  CHAPTER 72

  Nathan Collier went over to the stone slab and sprinkled it with dry leaves.

  I think it was cilantro. The air suddenly smelled like salsa.

  “I am now preparing the sacrificial altar for capacocha!” he declared.

  “I am now sharpening the blade on my sacrificial knife!” cried Juan Carlos Rojas.

  “I am now standing over here,” said Chet who probably figured he was supposed to say something.

  I really did wish Mom were there. Just so I could say good-bye. Just so we could all be together again. Just so I could apologize for every time I did something stupid or didn’t play my part and do what the family needed me to do.

  Rojas slipped the blade back into his belt, thrust out his arms, and raised them high.

  “Bring unto me the sacrificial child!” he said to the sky.

  “We should start with that one,” said Chet, pointing at Tommy. “He’s such a brave warrior, all the ladies looooove him.”

  “Very well,” said Rojas. “Bring him forth unto the altar!”

  Chet and Nathan Collier bustled over to where we all sat at the base of the golden idol. Mr. Collier pointed his pistol at Beck’s head.

  “One false move, Thomas,” he said, “and I will shoot your little sister.”

  Chet slipped the chain through Tommy’s handcuffs and grabbed him roughly by the arm.

  He forgot to relock the chain.

  The two Colliers dragged Tommy over to the altar.

  “Whoa, take it easy, dudes. You’re messing up my hair again.”

  “That won’t matter where you’re goi
ng,” said Chet. “There won’t be any girls!”

  “What? How can it be heaven if there aren’t any angels?”

  “Quiet!” shouted Rojas. “This is a religious service. Show some respect.”

  “Sorry,” said Tommy. “My bad.”

  The three men hoisted him up onto the stone table and forced him to lie down.

  “On my go,” whispered Dad, because even though we were still handcuffed, there was nothing securing us to the idol’s legs anymore. We could rush Rojas and head-butt him until he dropped the blade.

  “Say the words, Mr. Collier!” said Señor Rojas. “Begin the ritual. It is time for capacocha!”

  Nathan Collier looked nervous. For his whole career, he’d made his name and fame by mooching off other people. He never did any real work or any homework. My guess? He had no idea what words he was supposed to speak.

  So he improvised.

  “Inca, dinka, pinka, doo! Arise, O Paititi, as I command you to.”

  Rojas lowered his priestly arms and stared at Collier.

  “What are you gibbering about? What are those silly words?”

  “It’s a rough translation of the, uh, ancient text,” explained Collier. “But don’t worry. If it doesn’t work with this Kidd, we have four more to choose from.”

  “Fine,” said Rojas, raising his knife high above his head, getting ready to plunge it deep into Tommy’s chest. “Continue!”

  “Don’t you dare!” shouted a woman from the ridge above us.

  “Leave Tommy alone!” shouted another.

  I looked up.

  It was Q’orianka and Milagros, the two beautiful girls Tommy had fallen in love with on this adventure. Apparently the feeling was mutual.

  “Don’t you dare harm my son!”

  Mom was up there on the bluff, too! Chaupi was right beside her. Mom had a video camera on her shoulder. She was also accompanied by what looked like a couple hundred indigenous people. From the village with the flood. And from the tribe near the river and the giant anaconda.

  Well, what do you know?

  Mom had arrived just in time and she’d brought along the cavalry.

  CHAPTER 73

  “Take him down, Yacu!” commanded Chaupi, the leader of the flooded village we’d visited.

  “Yes, Father!”

  Up on the ridge, the little boy Yacu, the one Beck and I had saved, held up an enormous blowgun. The thing had to be two yards long. Yacu? He was maybe three feet tall. Juan Carlos Rojas stared at the boy in disbelief.

  “Who are these insolent jackals?” he bellowed. “Do they not know who I am? Why are they not bowing down before me?”

  While he was distracted, Tommy rolled off the altar.

  Yacu took his shot.

  I heard something whizzing through the air and then the telltale fwick! of a dart hitting flesh.

  “Yoooow!” shrieked Juan Carlos Rojas, dropping the knife and raising a hand to his neck to slap whatever had just bitten him.

  It was a dart, of course. With fast-acting sleepy-time juice on its tip.

  Rojas’s knees buckled. His shoulders drooped. His feathered crown toppled off his head. He crumpled to the ground to become a lumpy heap of priest robe.

  Little Yacu had totally nailed him. The kid had some pair of lungs.

  “Now!” shouted Dad.

  Beck, Storm, Dad, and I charged across the clearing and rammed both Colliers in their guts as Mom and her war-cry-whooping army of locals streamed down from the ridge into the valley.

  The battle was over in, like, fifteen seconds.

  “Sorry we couldn’t attack sooner,” said Mom after she and Dad had kissed and we’d all hugged and junk. “Chaupi and I wanted to get video of Señor Rojas poised to strike Tommy with the knife. It’s all the evidence we need. I feel certain he will now be charged with attempted murder.”

  “What about the Colliers?” I said, spitting out that crummy K sound again.

  “They’re going to jail, too,” said Mom.

  “On what charge?” fumed Nathan Collier, who was being restrained by six beefy residents of Chaupi’s village.

  “Conspiracy to commit murder!” snarled Mom.

  “Nuh-uh,” whimpered Chet, also being restrained by half a dozen musclemen. “It wasn’t murder, Mrs. Kidd. We were doing archaeological research on the ancient Incan custom of child sacrifice.”

  “Tell it to the judge,” said Dad.

  “Chya,” said Tommy. “Maybe he’ll let you off with a warning. Not!”

  Chaupi ripped the key chain off Chet’s belt and freed us all from our shackles.

  “Are you injured, Tommy?” asked Milagros, who’d come tearing down into the valley with Mom and the rest of the cavalry.

  “Did these mean men hurt you?” cooed Q’orianka. Both girls were kind of rubbing Tommy’s muscles and stuff, trying to soothe and comfort him. It was gross.

  “It hurt a little bit,” said Tommy. He pointed to his lips. “Right around here.”

  Beck and I tried not to hurl.

  A Peruvian army helicopter landed in the clearing to cart Rojas, the high priest, Supay, and the Colliers away.

  We were all feeling great. Storm was actually smiling.

  But not Dad. He looked bummed.

  “I really thought, at the end of this journey, we’d find the Lost City of Gold,” he muttered.

  “Professor Thomas Kidd?” scoffed Mom. “Don’t tell me you’re giving up before the quest is over. What kind of treasure hunter are you, anyway?”

  She was grinning.

  She definitely had something up her sleeve.

  And I couldn’t wait to see what it was!

  CHAPTER 74

  “While I was in Lima,” Mom explained, “the president granted Chaupi and me access to two treasures from the archives of their National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology, and History.”

  “What are they?” I asked.

  “The first,” said Mom, “is a very short sermon from our old friend Father Toledo. It was meant to be sent to His Holiness the Pope in Rome, but, for whatever reason, it never was.”

  “What does it say?” asked Dad.

  Mom handed the piece of weathered parchment, which was hermetically sealed in a plastic sleeve, to Storm, because she can speed-translate from Spanish to English.

  “Looks like a riddle,” said Storm.

  “That’s what I thought, too,” said Mom.

  Storm read it out loud: “‘To find the treasure, follow Romans twelve-five, for it is how Inkarri will one day be put back together. When he is, the City of Gold will not rise, but it shall be found. Romans twelve-five is the key and it must be turned where the pagan idol still smiles like an innocent child.’”

  “I did some homework on the chopper flight up,” said Mom. “Romans twelve-five, of course, refers to a verse in the Bible: ‘So we, though many, form one body.’”

  “Cool,” I said. “But what does it mean?”

  “Well, I’m not a biblical scholar—”

  “You just have to finish writing that one paper, Sue, and you will be,” said Dad.

  “True. But I think the verse means that the early Church, being described by Saint Paul in that verse, is sort of like our family. Everybody brings different talents to the table but we all need each other to be whole and complete.”

  “Well, if I may,” said Storm, “how does that help us find the Lost City of Paititi?”

  Mom held up a finger. “Aha. Item number two from the museum.”

  She pulled a bundle of purple velvet out of her knapsack, unwrapped the cloth, and revealed the rounded blade of a tumi knife attached to a flat plate with several bumps and grooves arrayed across its body with geometric precision. It kind of reminded me of a circuit board where you pop computer components into place.

  Something was etched into the metal plate in ancient Incan script—the same kind of writing we’d seen on the cave wall where we found the Sacred Stone.

  “What’s it say?
” asked Beck.

  “‘I am Inkarri,’” translated Storm.

  “Tom,” Mom said to Dad, “remember that tumi piece you found on Cocos Island?”

  “The head,” said Dad, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the carved piece of gold. He handed it to Mom. She put it down at the top of the flat plate.

  It snapped into place!

  Chaupi stepped forward. “Only one with great intelligence could find Inkarri’s head, his seat of wisdom, which long ago had been entrusted to the good priest Father Toledo.”

  “Of course!” blurted out Storm. “The legend of Inkarri! It all makes sense.”

  Okay. Maybe to her.

  But I was still kind of in the dark.

  CHAPTER 75

  “Remember?” said Storm. “The conquistadors chopped Inkarri’s body into a bunch of pieces. His head was buried one place, his arms and legs and torso somewhere else.”

  “Yes,” said Chaupi. “For the Spaniards feared Inkarri’s vow to rise from the dead.”

  “And if his body was ever reconstructed,” said Dad, “if all the pieces were put back together, the Incan Empire would rise from the ashes.”

  “The same is true for the sacred tumi,” said Chaupi. “Inkarri’s followers scattered its pieces all over the rain forest. They trusted our ancestors who lived in remote isolation to guard and protect these precious artifacts across the centuries. We were to give them only to people like Father Toledo, individuals who, because of their goodness and strength of character, could be trusted to return our hidden treasure to us once it was found. Explorers with cunning, courage, wisdom, and, most important, compassion.”