Area 51: The Mission-3
nerve-racking three. Already they'd had to pull the boat over three sunken logs.
    Ruiz looked over his shoulder. Harrison was looking at his map and scratching his head. Ruiz climbed the

    31

    few wooden steps to what served as the boat's bridge. He leaned close and kept his voice low.
    "May I be of assistance?" The American was a very large and fat man, used to the easy life of the city.
    Ruiz was a different breed of man from both the American and the street peasants. He was one of the few who made their living on the upper branches of the Amazon. Sometimes trading to remote outposts, other times guiding various expeditions and tours. Sometimes poaching. Sometimes capturing exotic birds and animals for sale on the lucrative black market for such creatures. Ruiz had also made some money off the illegal recovery and shipping of antiquities, particularly from countries west of Brazil, in the Andean highlands and mountains.
    "We are on track," Harrison said.
    "For where?" Ruiz asked.
    Ruiz knew little about the American other than that he was from one of the many universities in the United States. He had said he was one of those who studied ancient peoples.
    Harrison looked about at the thick jungle that surrounded them. He turned back to his guide. The American had paid good money. He had several plastic cases lashed to the deck, the contents of which were unknown to Ruiz when they were loaded.
    "I am looking for something," Harrison said.
    "I could help you if I knew what you were looking for."
    "The Aymara," Harrison said.
    Ruiz kept his face fiat. He had won many a poker hand on the river with that look. "The Aymara are only a legend. They are long dead."
    "I believe they still exist," Harrison said
    "Senor, the ruins of Tiahaunaco, where the Aymara

    32

    lived, are in Bolivia. Many hundreds of miles from here. Many thousands of meters higher. We can never reach there by boat."
    Despite not knowing exactly where they were, Ruiz was very interested. He knew they only had to turn around and go with the flow of the water and they would eventually reach Vilhena. But one of the reasons he had grown to love the river area were the fantastic stories his grandfather had told him. Of ancient cities hidden under the jungle. Lost cities of gold. Hundred-foot snakes.
    Strange tribes. And guiding someone like Harrison could lead him to a site to return to and plunder, something Ruiz had done more than once.
    "How did Tiahuanaco appear so suddenly?" Harrison asked. He didn't wait for an answer. "And how did the Aymara disappear so abruptly?"
    Ruiz had heard stories about both those events. "Kon-Tiki Viracocha."
    Harrison paused and looked at Ruiz. "Yes. The strange white man who legend says founded Tiahuanaco. Some myths say he was from Egypt. Jorgenson sailed in his boat of reeds across the Atlantic to prove the ancient Egyptians could have made such a journey here to South America. He felt that the pyramids built at Tiahuanaco were so similar to those in Egypt that there had to be an ancient connection.
    "And even before that," Harrison continued, "Jorgenson showed that the people of South America could have populated the Pacific, sailing his raft of balsa wood, the Kon-Tiki, west from Chile to the islands of the southwest Pacific. He speculated a worldwide connection between early civilizations, and he was laughed at despite his evidence and his expeditions. Now that we know about the Airlia, we know that he was right and

    33

    there was a connection between the earliest human civilizations."
    Ruiz was intrigued. He had read the papers about the aliens, but it had been hard to sort through all the conflicting accounts. "Jorgenson is at Tucume, on the Peruvian coast. He is digging at the pyramids he found there."
    Harrison looked at his guide with more interest. "Yes. And now that we know Atlantis was real, his theories gain even more support. He was right, while those that scoffed at him are now the fools."
    "Kon-Tiki Viracocha
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