Life Blood ---XIX---Page No--62

I felt another wave of dismay, right into my churning stomach.
        "Well, keep your heading north." Dupre's voice was coming
 from a place of extreme pain. "And if you sight the Rio Tigre, then
Baalum or whatever should be more or less due west, according
to what I'm assuming. Just keep your eyes open." He paused.
"Problem is, with all this rain, the river's going to be tough to make
out."

I redoubled my efforts to peer out the window, searching, my
breath coming in bursts. Still nothing. Dear God, what now?
        Finally Dupre headed back, bracing himself against the
firewall as he crouched and passed through the door into the main
cabin. When he settled into the seat across from me, he was
glaring at me as though everything was my fault. "You know." He
was yelling again. "I'm beginning to think maybe we ought to try to
find a clearing and just sit out this crap till morning." He leaned
over and peered down through the Bell's spattered side windows
at the dense tangle of growth below. After a moment he got up
and once more moved the toward the cockpit, still with the same
troubled look. This time, however, he was beaming as he shouted
back.

"There may be a God after all. I think we just intersected the Rio Tigre. We can bear due west now, along the river. We could be getting close, if it's where I think it is."

I turned and stared down again, barely making out the thread
of the stream through the rain. Yes! Maybe there's hope. Still,
below us the windblown treetops were a solid mass of pastel
sparkles, a dancing sea of hungry green . . . But then I thought I
saw something. Hey! It might even be a clearing. I quickly
unbuckled and made my way up to the cockpit, hanging on to
anything I could grasp.

"Alan, look," I yelled, and pointed off to the side, out

through the rain-obscured windscreen. "I think we just passed over something. Back there. See?"

"Where?" He squinted.

"You can still just make it out." I twisted and kept pointing. I was biting my lip, trying to hold together. "There . . . it looks like some kind of clearing. Maybe . . . I don't know, but what if we just set down there and let this storm blow over?"

He ordered Villatoro to bank and go back for a look. A few
moments later it was obvious there was an opening in the trees.
        "Yeah, let's check it out." He then said something to Villatoro
and we started easing toward it, definitely a wide opening. The
billowing ocean of trees below us seemed to be parting like the
Red Sea as we settled in. There had to be solid ground down
there somewhere. Had to be.

"What's . . ." I was pointing. "There, over to the side, it's a kind of hill or something. It's—"

"Where?" Dupre squinted again, his voice starting to crack.
Then he focused in. "Yeah, maybe there's something there. Hard
to tell what it is, though. But I guess we're about to find out."

He gestured to the lieutenant, barking an order in quick

Spanish. While the Bell kept moving lower through the opening, Dupre flicked on the landing lights, and appeared to be muttering a prayer of thanks.

I was staring out, growing ever more puzzled. A "hill" was

there, all right. The problem was, it was definitely man-made,

topped by a stone building. I could just make it out in the glare of the lights.

"What do you think that is?"

"What do I think?" Dupre studied the scene for a moment

longer, and then his face melted into the first smile I'd seen since
we left. "I think we are lucky beyond belief. God help us, we may
have found it. That could be the damned pyramid or whatever's
supposed to be up here." He leaned back. "Yeah, congratulations.
Look at that damned thing. Either this is the place, or we're about
to become the archaeologists of the year. Cover of Time. The

Nobel frigging Prize."

At that moment I almost wanted to hug Alan Dupre, but not
quite. Instead I moved farther into the cockpit, trying to get a look
out the windscreen. By then we had lowered well through the
opening in the trees, the helicopter's controls fighting against the
blowing rain, and it felt as though we'd begun descending into the
ocean's depths in a diving bell, surrounded by thrashing, wind-
whipped branches.

Now, though, I was staring at the ghostly rise of the pyramid emerging out of the rain.