by Rob Jones
“Where is this place?” Decker asked.
Atticus squinted at the map. “If my understanding is right, then I would say north of Lake Miramar.”
“And where might that be?” Charlie asked.
“It’s in the Lacandon Jungle,” said the old English professor. “One of the most untouched areas of Middle America. Talk about the middle of nowhere!”
“Then we’d better get moving,” Decker said. “Someone get a picture of that damned seal.”
Charlie leaned forward and snapped a picture with his phone. “All done.”
“Then it’s time to go,” Selena said.
“I don’t think so!”
The voice shattered the silent darkness, a cold, hard voice with a rich Yucatan Spanish accent.
“What the hell?” Decker said.
The armed men rushed into the far end of the chamber with their guns raised. As their shadows bobbed about in the gloom, Decker reached for his weapon. “Are we all ready for some CQB?”
“For what?” Diana asked.
“Close quarter battle,” he said with a shrug.
“It won’t come to that, surely!” she said.
Before he could answer, the men opened fire on them.
13
Bullets traced through the chamber’s dusty air, forcing the team to drop to the floor and find somewhere safe out of the line of fire. As the team scattered, Diana scrambled behind the altar and tucked up in a ball at the base of the stone sculpture of Huracan, cradling her head in her arms and holding her breath.
Not for the first time, the gunfire frightened her so much she felt like crying. Unlike the rest of her friends in the Avalon crew, with the exception of Selena, her background was not military or secret service. She led the simple and safe existence of an academic in her homeland of Portugal. As a specialist in ancient languages and palaeography, she had looked forward to a stable and rewarding life in the academy, but then her old friend Selena Moore had called her up and asked her to help find the mythical Tibetan kingdom of Shambhala.
After that, everything changed.
A bullet struck the pillar at the head of the Huracan statue, ricocheting inches from her head and spraying her with stone fragments. She screamed and tucked herself even tighter into a ball, suddenly overwhelmed with the fear she was about to get shot. What would it feel like? She imagined a red hot piece of lead tearing through her body and shuddered at the thought. She didn’t know how the rest of the crew felt about it, but she wasn’t about to get used to getting shot any time soon.
“You okay, Di?”
Riley’s voice. She peeked through her arms and saw the young Australian firing a burst of rounds from a nasty-looking handgun. He was scrambling over to her through the dust. The noise of his gun was deafeningly loud, not to mention all the smoke and the smell of ignited gunpowder. It made her feel sick.
“I’m okay, thanks.”
He was next to her now. “Keep your head down, mate. I mean it.”
The former SASR corporal was a kidder with all his jokes and gags, but in business hours he was the most serious man she had ever known. With a look of stern concentration on his lean, tanned face and the gun cradled in the classic two-handed hold, Riley Carr twisted his upper body and fired another peal rounds into the head of a man trying to run toward them.
With each shot, Diana jumped, but this time kept the impulse to scream in check. The killing business was violent and bloody. A man shot in the head was not a good thing to see or hear, and these were sights and sounds she could live without. Skulls did not break apart easily, and watching brain matter spraying over a stone wall was something you never forgot.
She hated it.
The attackers took cover but kept fighting with the intensity of men who were days away from the discovery of their lifetimes, and the unlimited wealth and power that would come with it. She guessed these were hardened criminals and thugs, but they were not stupid men, nor were they cowards. Like the rest of the crew, she knew they would fight to the death to beat them to Montesino’s ancient secret and the doomsday device he had described in his Codex.
She was suddenly aware of Decker’s voice. The American was closer to the entrance, firing on other men and now diving for cover behind what looked like a boulder. It was hard to see in the smoke, and chaos now reigned supreme in the chamber. Then, the men charged toward them once again and began fighting in an even greater explosion of rage.
Riley aimed and fired but his weapon was out of rounds. He wasted no time. No curses, no complaints. He tossed the gun to the floor and snatched at a hand shovel in one of their packs at his feet. He weighed it in his hands and then spun it across the chamber at the men running toward them. The cutting edge of the dusty sheet steel blade gouged a rugged gash in one of their throats. He was dead before he hit the floor.
At the same moment, Charlie made a running jump to the altar and used its smooth stone surface to launch himself at the rest of the men as they fanned out into the chamber. Atticus and Acosta were sheltering in an alcove with Selena, each looking more terrified than she had ever seen them before. Selena made a break for Decker but one of the men caught up with her.
“Wait here!” Riley said.
He got to his feet just in time to see Selena delivering a brutal kick right into the center of the man’s face. After the strike, she rotated around one-eighty degrees, bringing her foot back down to the floor and putting her hands on her hips. “Nicely done, even if I do say so my—”
Her words were cut short when one of the other bandits hurled himself at her and tackled her to the floor. She hit the flagstones with a hefty thump and cried out in pain, alerting Decker to what had just happened. He turned to see her struggling with the man and called out to her.
“Are you okay?”
“Never… better…”
A man with a long black ponytail rushed Decker and shoulder-barged him to the floor. He threw a punch and Decker dodged it. The American forced him back with his knees but the two men were quickly embroiled in a brutal fist fight and Selena was still fighting for her life.
“I’m on my way!” Riley yelled, still running across the chamber under a hail of bullets.
Charlie watched him from across the chamber. “You’re one crazy, jacked-up, adrenaline-pumped, maverick, Riley!”
“I am not crazy!” Riley yelled back. “I’ll give you a pass on the rest.”
Decker delivered a savage uppercut to his opponent’s face, smashing the man’s jaw shut and knocking him out on the spot before rushing over and grabbing hold of the man attacking Selena.
“You took your sweet time,” she said between breaths.
Riley arrived at the same time. “Sorry I’m late!”
“Job’s taken, Riley,” Decker said.
With a chunky fistful of sweat-streaked flannel shirt in his hands, the former US Marine heaved the heavy man away from Selena and pulled him to his feet. He recoiled his fist and aimed it in the center of his face. “Son…of…a…”
Smack!
The punch spread the man’s nose all over his face and sent him tumbling backwards into Selena. She was still trying to get to her feet, and now the man tripped over her body and fell back onto the flagstones.
Decker padded over to him, ready to finish the job, but Selena was now back up and running and stopped him. “Please, allow me.”
“You think you can handle it?”
As the man crawled up to his hands and knees, blood pouring from his splattered nose, Selena shut one eye and aimed squarely between his legs. After a short run-up to gather some forward momentum, she planted her right boot right where it counted most. The man’s squeals filled the chamber, but were silenced when she ran around to his head, lifted it from the floor and cracked it back down again on the hard tiles.
“There,” she said, dusting her hands off. “You can count him out for the rest of the day’s play.”
Decker looked at the man with something approach
ing pity. “I guess you could handle him.”
She walked past him and winked. “You betcha, Mitch.”
“Why is it so quiet in here?” said Riley. “I was just getting warmed up!”
“Because the fight is over,” Atticus said, his voice thin in the smoky darkness.
“What do you mean?” Selena asked.
“I mean the other men have gone.” His voice grew dark. “And they took the jade seal with them. They have the map of Flower Mountain with them.”
Decker ached and rubbed his jaw where one of the men had punched him. “Ain’t that just fantastic.”
“So, what now?” Diana asked.
“It’s obvious,” Selena said. “As of this moment, we are officially in a race with those thugs to find Flower Mountain and secure the Stormbringer.”
“And we’re going to need to know who we’re up against,” Charlie said. “I can help with that. I have a lot of good friends in the intel community. Let me make some calls when we’re back on the surface.”
“All right,” Decker said. “Let’s go back to the plane.”
14
They reached Maya Flats after sunset and walked across the airfield in silence. Above their heads, a rich Egyptian blue canvas littered with tropical stars stretched down to the horizon, but none of them saw it. Each of the crew members made their way over to the shining silver hull of the Avalon with a heavy heart, their heads roiling with the gunfight back at the ruins.
Climbing up inside the aircraft, they each slumped down on a seat and did whatever they could to get their heads together. After a few seconds, Charlie’s phone bleeped and alerted him to an incoming message. He opened it and read it. Then, with everyone sitting and watching him with bated breath, he told them what his old friend at MI5 had just sent him.
“The good news first,” he began. “Thanks to the security camera here at the airfield, my contacts in MI5 managed to get an ID on some of the men who attacked us at the ruins.”
“Great!” Selena said. “Who are they?”
“That’s the bad news,” he said with a frown. “First, the boss is a man named Ramon Morales. Originally from Acapulco, he now lives in Cancún. He goes by the moniker Tarántula, earned because of his obsession with the spider. Runs one of the biggest drugs cartels in Mexico and trails a body-count as long as a freight train behind him.”
“Sounds nasty.”
“And he doesn’t work alone. His bodyguard is a serious criminal named Diego Novarro – he was the guy with the ponytail and tattoos. Others in his gang are Carlos and Miguel Mercado, two brothers from Mexico City heavily involved in the smuggling trade. In their case, that means mostly class A narcotics, but they’re not fussy. They use their black market contacts and criminal network to smuggle anything into anywhere.”
“Cripes,” Riley said. “They sound like real meanies.”
“They are,” Charlie continued. “They’re known to MI5 because of the part they played in a smuggling ring bringing Mexican cocaine into the United Kingdom a few years ago. Part of the original shipment went to Southampton and part went into Miami. The American authorities got a tip off and caught them in the act and they were sentenced to life behind bars in Colorado.”
“Life?” Diana said. “For drug smuggling?”
“First, it was a lot of drugs, tens of millions of dollars in street value. Enough to keep Florida high for the next decade. Second, both men were on the FBI’s Most Wanted List for gangland murders within the United States. Carlos, the older brother, shot a man in…”
“Reno?” Riley said.
Selena slapped his shoulder. “Silence!”
“Sorry.”
“Not Reno,” Charlie said. “But it was in Nevada. He killed a man outside a casino in Vegas.”
“And the younger brother?” Atticus asked.
“Miguel,” said Charlie. “He stabbed a man to death in El Paso outside a nightclub. In both cases they used their smuggling network to get out of the country undetected and since the US-Mexican extradition treaty doesn’t include citizens of their own countries, the Mexican authorities refused to send them over the Rio Grande.”
“But they went into Florida,” Acosta said. “You already said they were busted there.”
“Under false names,” Charlie said. “In fact, during the trial, the US authorities found out both men had properties in Florida and regularly travelled there, usually entering illegally on boats used by their own smuggling networks. My contact tells me they are both extremely dangerous men with volatile tempers. Carlos, especially, is well-known for being unpredictable and extremely unforgiving toward his enemies. Less than a year after the trial, the head of the man who tipped off the FBI about the Miami drugs operation was found in a garbage can outside a police station in Tampa.”
“Que nojento!” Diana muttered, turning her head in disgust.
Riley nodded. “If that means holy crap, then at least I don’t have to say it, too.”
“It’s close enough,” she said.
“Anything else on Tarántula?” Decker asked. “Specifically, why the sudden interest in archaeological relics and doomsday machines? Is he planning something?”
Charlie shook his head. “Rich has nothing on that. Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about, old man,” Atticus said, giving him a hearty pat on the back. “Your friend has done a wonderful job. Now we know who we’re up against.”
“And it’s not good,” Acosta said. “These men sound like animals. I mean, to order someone’s decapitation like that…”
“I hear that,” Riley said. “Sounds like they’re both off their heads.”
“I’m not even going to comment on that remark,” Selena said.
Riley grinned. “But didn’t you just do exactly that?”
“And didn’t I just tell you to be silent?”
He put his arm around her and gave her a squeeze. “You’d miss me if I wasn’t here.”
“I wouldn’t miss,” Selena said. “I’d aim straight for between the eyes.”
“Funny.”
Decker frowned. “Maybe this Tarántula just found out Montesino was on the trail of something else, something valuable – I mean seriously financially valuable like gems or gold or something and they want it for themselves, or maybe even to smuggle for someone else. Maybe they don’t know anything about the doomsday machine.”
Atticus sighed. “Consider this. Apart from the rumors spread by the idiot Danvers, the only real evidence of the Stormbringer is inside the Codex, which only we have read. With this in mind, I think we have to presume something like Mitch has just suggested,” he said glumly. “Just our luck, too! We finally get the Codex and discover the Stormbringer is probably real and we find ourselves up against a bunch of murderous cartel thugs out for loot.”
“Then we just have to be extra vigilant on this mission, Dad,” Selena said. “We can do that.”
“Did your contact get an ID on any of the other men who attacked us?” Acosta asked.
Charlie looked down at his phone and began scrolling through his old friend’s message. “Only one of them. The one with the face tattoos and red bandana is called Diablo.”
“His parents called him the Devil?” Diana asked with wide eyes.
“No, it’s just a gang name. They don’t know his real name. Very little is known about him except he’s not part of Tarántula’s normal smuggling network. He’s a sort of freelance thug and killer who works for the highest bidder. Some say he was the guy who took off the grass’s head and threw it in the dumpster behind the police station in Tampa.”
“Well, isn’t that just the best news?” Diana said. “I’m so glad I decided to come along on this mission.”
“Take it easy, mate,” Riley said, suddenly all business. “Anyone wants to hurt you, they’re coming through me first.”
“Thanks, Riley,” she said, reaching out and squeezing his arm. “That actually makes me feel much better.”
“No worries.”
“All right. Let’s get going,” Decker said, getting up from the seat and heading up to the cockpit. “The sooner we start, the sooner we get out to Lake Miramar. Thanks to the Avalon being a flying boat, I can set her down right in the middle of the lake. That should save us the time of having to find the nearest airfield and driving all the way out there, at least.”
*
An hour later, the old Grumman Albatross was sailing high over the Yucatan Peninsula. They were at eighteen thousand feet now and flying towards the west and the North Pacific Ocean. Decker eased back into the worn leather seat and breathed out a low sigh. Nothing like cruising above a tropical paradise in your own plane, he thought.
This was the life he loved, but it was time for a change. Back in Mexico City a few days ago, he had wandered into a jewellery store and paid a fair sum of money for a beautiful emerald and diamond engagement ring. He’d first had the feeling he wanted to get hitched to Selena way back on their first mission to Shambhala and it had gotten worse from there. Maybe now was the time to ask.
Maybe not.
What if she said no? Feisty didn’t begin to describe Professor Selena Moore. It was just possible her answer might cause irreparable damage to his ego. Maybe better if he just forgot all about it and took the ring back. That sounded like the safest play.
After another quick scan of the instrument panel he peered outside and gazed at the endless rainforest passing beneath them. Belize was long gone now, replaced by the breadnut and mahogany forests of Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve. This was a full fifth of the small country and over twenty thousand square kilometers.
He’d read some time ago in a National Geographic about it becoming one of UNESCO’s biosphere models, a special program designed to improve the relationship between mankind and the ecosystem. He was wondering exactly what that meant when Selena walked into the cockpit and slid into the first officer’s seat.
“It’s a beautiful night,” she said, staring out at the ribbon of violet painted across the horizon.