Evil Star
The smell of burning hung in the air. Above them, the radio mast had been blown in half, the bent and broken steelwork shrouded in smoke. There were loose bricks and broken pieces of metal everywhere. The walls were pitted with bullet holes. All the lights had been extinguished, but the Incas had brought oil lamps and were using them to examine the wounded and the dead.
Forcing themselves to ignore the devastation, they had run over to the launchpad only to discover the bad news. The keys were in the ignition. Atoc knew how to fly it. But it could only take one passenger. Atoc and one other would face Salamanda at the place of Qolqa. Which one of them would it be? There was no time for negotiation.
"I'll go," Matt said.
"Matt. . ." Richard began.
"This is my fight, Richard. I began this. It's all because of me. I'll go with Atoc."
"I go, too." Pedro stepped forward. He was still holding his slingshot. He reminded Richard of a Peruvian David, about to take on Goliath.
Matt nodded. "The two of us can fit into one seat," he said. "Pedro's right. He must come, too."
"But you're just kids!" Richard cried. His voice was hoarse. The smoke seemed to have gotten into his throat. "You can't do this on your own."
"We've always been on our own," Matt said. He smiled tiredly. "It Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star has to be this way, Richard. The amauta said it would happen like this. It seems he was right."
"We have no time," Atoc said.
It was twenty to eleven. Very soon, the satellite would be in position. Matt nodded. He and Pedro moved forward.
The helicopter took almost five minutes to achieve full power. By the end, the rotors were whipping up the sand and the whole thing had disappeared in a cloud of dust. Richard tried to watch but his eyes were raw. His arm was folded across his face. He could hardly breathe.
The engine increased in volume. The helicopter rose clumsily off the ground. Squinting, Richard could just make out Matt with Pedro squeezed next to him. Matt looked more serious, more determined than Richard had ever seen him look before. The helicopter rocked on its axis, once, then again.
Then suddenly it rose and soared over the wire.
There was only one hour left.
Chapter 20 The Gate Opens
It was Pedro who saw it first. From the air it looked like a sil-ver matchbox, glinting in the moonlight, sitting on its own in the great emptiness of the Nazca plain. It could have been a trailer or some sort of mobile home. But it had been driven into the middle of the desert, its tires gouging out a track in the soft earth, and parked in front of the place of Qolqa. There could be no doubt at all who was Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star inside it. This was the laboratory that Fabian had warned them about. Salamanda was controlling the satellite from here.
The journey had taken half an hour. There were just thirty minutes until midnight.
"Something wrong . . ." Atoc said.
The words were no sooner out of his mouth than Matt felt it. The helicopter shuddered and seemed to come to a halt in midair. They were twelve thousand feet above the ground and suddenly Matt was horribly aware of every sin-gle one of them. His stomach churned as they dropped. Pedro, squeezed into the seat beside him, cried out in alarm. Atoc pulled desperately at the controls, and the heli-copter recovered, tottering in the air like a drunken man.
"What is it?" Matt demanded.
"I don't know . . . !"
A single, stray bullet had done the damage. It had slammed into the side of the helicopter, severing one of the main hydraulic cables, and although it had held for a while, the truth was that they should never have taken off. The power to the rotors had been cut and now the helicop-ter went into free fall. It was like being sucked into a black hole. The entire universe seemed to twist around them and — in a blur of silver and yellow and black — Matt caught sight of the desert floor rushing toward them. Atoc was shouting in his own language, perhaps a final prayer. All the instruments on the dashboard had gone mad, nee-dles spinning, counters turning, warning lights flashing uselessly. Pedro grabbed hold of him. The entire cabin was vibrating crazily. Matt was seeing three of everything. His eyeballs felt as if they were being torn out of his Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star head.
Atoc did the best that he could. Even without power, there was enough energy left in the spinning blades to
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