Alicia didn’t dwell. Zack had won, in her mind. And so had she. The pain she lived with every day could be shrugged off, the old anxieties buried beneath unending action. It was at uneasy moments like this that she piped up and offered her own sarcastic slant to almost any conversation.
Kanab lay sun-blasted beneath an azure sky. Huge old American cars prowled the wide streets, Buicks and Chryslers and Cadillacs; the relatively short trees and towering backdrops gave the place a wide-open, insecure kind of feel, offering little shelter. Straight roads bisected the place, leading from the main street to the many houses.
Crouch aimed their car toward the largest restaurant. “Let’s get some food,” he said. “And start asking questions.”
“Think that’s a good idea? Won’t Coker and his South African widowmaker be on the chase?” Russo asked.
“We cut out of there kinda sharpish.” Crouch shrugged. “Flight plan was bogus. It’ll take them a few days. I hate to leave Coker in that situation,” he added as he parked. “But we don’t have the resources to take on a criminal kingpin just yet.”
Alicia slipped out of the car. “Coker will show his head again. If I don’t have to blow it off I’ll find out why someone’s controlling it.”
Cruz followed the conversation in silence, his thoughts seemingly lost in the surrounding wonders.
The restaurant was almost empty, the waitresses standing around bored. As the team took their seats a smiling woman sporting schoolteacher glasses and pigtails ambled over to them.
“Help ya?”
Crouch reeled off a set of drinks, then waited expectantly for her to write it all down. The waitress grinned and tapped at the side of her head. “Memory like Microsoft. Drinks will be right up. Name’s Rosie by the way.”
She ambled off, taking her time. Crouch looked from face to face. “Maybe we should have ordered food at the same time.”
“Cheer up,” Caitlyn said. “It’s not like we have anywhere to go.”
“Not yet. Do you have everything you need to install those cameras into our new gear?”
They had lost some of their gear in the hurry to leave Mexico.
“Sure. I can make do. Plus, they’re bound to have some kind of electrical supply store around here.”
Rosie returned with their drinks. Crouch immediately slid Healey’s map before her. “Do you live in Kanab, Rosie? Do you recognize any of these landmarks?”
The waitress looked a little bewildered. “You guys don’t look the treasure hunter types.”
Crouch grimaced. “You get asked that a lot?”
“Three hundred sixty days a year, honey. Though I can’t recall seeing something quite like this.” She squinted at the drawings. “That one looks like the Tower of Babel, a long way from here but quite distinctive, whilst that one looks like the Fiery Furnace, quite close to the Tower. Can’t be sure though. Oh, and that one could be a view of Grandview Peak and Little Black Mountain together. You live around here long enough you see all the famous views time after time. Pretty close, I’d say, but don’t quote me on it.” She reeled off several more landmark sites. “Some can look pretty much like another. You get these from a children’s book?” Her eyes twinkled.
Alicia snorted at Healey. “Kind of.”
Crouch spoke again before Rosie could turn and leave. “I guess we won’t stand out in Kanab as being any different?”
Rosie grinned. “Tourists. If I had a dime for every would-be gold digger that drifted through here I’d be a millionaire.” She nodded toward the shiny counter. “And several more o’ them gold diggers are back there, honey. Watch yourself.”
She spun and walked off, hips swaying, leaving Crouch staring after her in surprise. Alicia leaned across the table and held his hands.
“Calm down, Michael. You look like you’ve never been hit on before.”
Crouch blinked. “It’s been a while.”
“Maybe we could ask her to be our guide?”
Crouch collected himself and threw her a look that clearly said, ‘behave’. “Let’s move on. Caitlyn—the laptop.”
The tech was already on it, tapping at the keys to bring up Google Maps. Once she’d enlarged a map of Utah she located the geographical map and started to scrutinize the topography. Rosie returned, took their menu order, and made a point of offering the group slices of free apple pie.
Crouch jumped at the suggestion, hooked by Rosie’s twinkling eyes. Healey and Caitlyn were snagged too, but Alicia and Lex managed to decline.
Russo only grumped. “Huh, I’m allergic to cake.”
Alicia squinted through one eye. “To cake?”
“It gives me a sore throat,” Russo declared.
Rosie winked and wandered away to start tapping their order into a terminal. Caitlyn looked up from the computer screen.
“I have the three landmarks that Rosie mentioned and others. They’re all pretty accurate if I’m being honest. Of course, this is a land of crags and hoodoos, odd shaped formations and weather-beaten rocks. My guess is there could be even more similarities.”
Crouch took a swallow of coffee. “Find them.”
Alicia watched the girl work, thinking that one of the obvious things they now needed was more laptops. But she was enjoying it, this learn-as-you-go adventuring with the new team. This new venture was nothing short of building an entire unit from the ground up, discovering mistakes and correcting them for the next go round, determining what worked and what didn’t, and adapting in mid-stride. It was a busy, engaging creation, peppered with danger and troublemakers and if this was their first run out—she couldn’t wait for the second.
Rosie placed their meals on the table and noticed what Caitlyn was doing. She placed her hands on her hips. “Y’know, I have to say. A lot of them prospectors come through here lookin’ for gold, they don’t come back. End up finding their bodies weeks or even months later, picked at by coyotes and crows. This can be a harsh part o’ the world for the unprepared.”
Crouch looked up at her. “Thanks for the advice. We’ve been in worse places.”
“Just sayin’. Some folks put it down to the land. Some put it down to the militia. Only thing I know is most that come lookin’ for a heap of gold get a heap of dead. Stories been around these parts for hundreds of years.” She fixed Crouch with a hard gaze. “There ain’t no damn gold.”
“Wait.” Crouch had stopped eating a while back. “Wait. Back up. What militia?”
“Some of the land out there ain’t all national park y’know. Some’s considered to be privately owned, at least by those that dwell on it. They call themselves the High Desert Militia; peculiar lot. Come into town sometimes spouting their beliefs and waving their guns. Plain jealous and plain bitter they are. All as straight as a three dollar note.”
Healey’s face creased in thought. Alicia twirled her finger around her ear. “She means they aren’t. Tell me, Rosie, where do these boys hang out?”
Rosie waved a hand in a northerly direction. “Across that way. You can’t miss ‘em. Got a fence around their property, but if you ask around we got plenty of guides in town. Most of ‘em will be happy to show you around for a fee.”
“Maybe we’ll do that. Thanks for your help, Rosie.”
“Anytime.”
“Wait.” Russo spoke up. “This militia. What’s the worst thing they’ve done?”
An odd question, but Alicia knew why the big man was asking it. Simply to determine the threat level. For the first time since they entered the restaurant Rosie’s face grew guarded, her movements cautious.
“I dunno. Folks don’t talk overmuch ‘bout the militia.”
“You said earlier—”
“You heard that? So what you asking for when you have an answer? I wouldn’t want to wander into their compound, put it that way.”
Crouch thanked Rosie again and then addressed Caitlyn. “What have you found?”
“The many formations unique to Utah are in fact mostly one of a kind. Th
e weather has molded them, shaped them. It does so differently with each part of the landscape and even each rock. The Tower of Babel is highly distinctive and incomparable. The Fiery Furnace is special too. Now, if either Grandview Peak or Little Black Mountain were formations on their own you couldn’t tell them apart from a hundred other landmarks, but put them together, and again they’re exceptional.”
“And the Aztecs relied on this.” Crouch nodded.
“Sure. They believed they would be following the map back within months, I would think. And though there are many escarpments and stepped monuments and odd towers, each one is an individual. I see only five matching objects to the ones on the map—and only three follow its actual lines.”
Alicia smiled. “Like having your cake and eating it too.” She clapped Caitlyn on the back, then shot a look over toward Russo. “Except in your case, Rob. Don’t wanna get those allergies going now, do we?”
Healey tapped on the table. “I feel like saying—saddle up!”
Caitlyn gave a gleeful little laugh. “Me too!”
Now Cruz grinned.
Alicia groaned. “Shit, why do I keep feeling like a Friday night babysitter?”
Crouch did nothing to dissuade the sudden upsurge of excitement. “The gold’s out there, guys. I’m sure of it. Imagine—my first venture into treasure hunting yields Montezuma’s famous gold. Damn, I’ve dreamed of this my whole life.”
“Is that why you collect old things?” Alicia wondered, remembering Crouch’s affectation for past-history souvenirs and relics. He had a reputation as a sentimentalist and, when not working, often pulled out a photo album packed with snaps as wide-ranging as his Corgi Ferrari Daytona 365 GTB/4, his Lee and Ditko Amazing Spiderman #4 special edition, his working Betamax and Honda CBX motorcycle. Other favorites included desk ornaments, paintings and restaurant keepsakes—the older within his own lifetime the better.
“Maybe,” Crouch acknowledged. “There was a time, quite recently actually, when I never thought I’d get to live my dream. Now, everything has changed. We can blame life for that, or fate, but it is what it is. And it will never change. In the military it’s like—here’s the new threat, same as the old threat. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda we helped snuff out of Afghanistan and Iraq have returned as IS. The Wall Street thieves the world saw disgraced returned as high-frequency traders without spending a single day behind bars.” He shrugged. “There will always be another war.”
“So we’re better off doing this?” Alicia finished clearing her plate and sat back. “At least until the next apocalypse.”
Crouch grinned warmly at her. “Yeah. Until then.”
SIXTEEN
Within an hour the team had secured a local guide and directed him to take them to the first location—Grandview Peak and Little Black Mountain. The entire route had been mapped out to over three hundred miles, but the group wanted to follow the map precisely rather than skip straight to the last location. Crouch in particular wanted their first expedition to be defined rather than ballpark, specific rather than nebulous.
Alicia hesitated at the idea of employing a guide. Did they need one? Surely finding these locations was a pretty painless exercise. After all, people had been finding them for years.
Caitlyn made sense of it. “He wants the drama, not to mention the added credibility. It will help make the find unquestionably authentic and even more appealing to our friends at the World Heritage Committee. It’s another reason he didn’t complain too much about having Cruz here tagging along.”
Cruz nodded. “I am an unqualified Aztec historian. An intermediary. A pacifier. A librarian.”
Alicia evaluated him. “Not a lover or a fighter then?”
“Maybe one. Not the other.”
“Damn. Right now I need a man that’s both.”
After swopping their vehicle for a larger, more robust four-wheel-drive they headed out of Kanab. It was late afternoon and the team had been on the go since their last fitful catnap on the plane, but nobody requested a break. The fact that Coker and his gun-toting entourage could turn up at any minute was not lost on them.
The single road wound out of the flat town and started to climb up into the hills. At first, Alicia was as fascinated as the rest of them by the Wild West country and the once in a lifetime spectacular sights, but she soon decided that once you’d seen one stunning canyon you’d pretty much seen them all. She tilted her headrest back and closed her eyes.
*
They woke her when Grandview Peak and Little Black Mountain emerged, comparing their map to the curves of the scenery. It was hard to imagine the Aztec warriors in their hide-covered caravans, struggling gamely along the mountain passes until they found a place to hide their gold. Even harder when sat in a burbling vehicle on a straight, asphalted road with an MP3 player and a cellphone strapped to your waist.
Further along they found the Tower of Babel and then Fiery Furnace. Crouch was convinced that they were the landmarks they sought. It was after the final one, the Fiery Furnace, when his nose dipped toward the map again.
“Over the spikes of the furnace,” he said. “There appears to be some kind of plateau and a great many trees. Is that correct?”
Their guide, a weathered American with a deep accent and a dislike for communication, nodded. His name was Boots, because he never removed them.
“From up there,” Crouch pointed to the plateau, “the calendar notations begin. The good news is that it’s in footsteps rather than days. We’re very close.”
“Won’t be going that way,” their guide piped up.
Crouch did a double-take. “Sorry?”
“Militia country. Everything past that plateau. Damn fools guard their territory like a bunch of apes around a banana factory.”
“You’re telling me that the place we want to be—the treasure site—is inside the perimeter set up by the High Desert Militia?”
Boots sucked his bottom lip hard. “That I am.”
Crouch took a deep breath to settle himself, then said, “Show me.”
*
Darkness had fallen by the time the small group located a parking area and hiked to the top of Fiery Furnace. Alicia took time to scan their surroundings and noted the profuse amount of twinkling campfires down below. Boots told them the Furnace was a regular tourist haunt as well as a place for serious hikers. Alicia began to wonder how the hell the Aztecs had hidden their gold from all these wandering people.
Before she could address the question, Boots was pointing across the top of the plateau. Alicia drew her jacket together against the night chill and peered into the distance. A smattering of stars and a crescent moon added a generous amount of light.
“Trees. Trees. Trees.” Boots pointed out each one. “Look between them. Look hard.”
Alicia peered. At the edge of her vision she thought she saw a high metal fence. Crouch consulted his map. “From this point.” He indicated a significant hollowed out shape in the edge of the cliff that led down to the Fiery Furnace. “From this exact point, the Aztecs turned to marking out the path in footsteps. One hundred paces and turn right, that kind of thing. We’re close. But . . . follow me.”
Crouch set off at pace, the team jumping to catch up and dragging a protesting Boots along with them. Their leader didn’t refer to the map just yet, but walked right up to the fence a hundred yards distant and stared through. Alicia stood at his shoulder.
Flat scrubland spread out to all sides, stretching away to a small collection of metal huts and buildings. Alicia could make out a central square marked by blazing trash cans, beaten-up cars, canvas-covered transport trucks, and a small central dais where a tattered, indistinct flag hung as if in defeat. Old, battered signs—handwritten—clung half-heartedly to the fence: It’s your ass if you ignore this fence.
She made a face. “Classy.”
Crouch evaluated the camp. “How far does it stretch?”
“Few miles. Maybe more.” Boots sucked at his lips nervously.
“How many of them?”
“How the hell should I know? But I seen at least thirty or forty at one time. So, probably more than that.”
Alicia squinted at their vague guide. “They show any signs of being dangerous?”
“Bad dudes.” Boots nodded. “Very bad dudes. I seen them chase down one of their own once, strap him to the back of one of those big trucks and drag him through the desert. Weren’t much left of the guy after that. I never seen ‘em back down to anyone. Not once. I guess they got the firepower to back ‘em up.”
“And the law?” Cruz asked. “Do they not become involved?”
“Cops leave ‘em alone. Never shown any major inclination to get involved here. Leastways, not without the Army as back up. But the militia do keep themselves to themselves mostly. Don’t cause no trouble.”
Alicia kept her eyes on the scene. She counted over twenty men lounging around, taking it easy, chatting in circles near the burning cans. Others walked between huts, carrying beer and cigarettes, laughing loudly. Somewhere a husky motorcycle started up, roaring at the night. No surveillance cameras were in evidence and the fence wasn’t electrified. The lack of a perimeter guard was all too clear.
“Easy to get in,” she said. “But still risky. And dangerous. And that sign about my ass really puts the jitters up me.”
Healey snickered.
“We’ll need to test them but not tonight,” Crouch said. “First we need a plan that centers round getting in and finding that treasure without being spotted.”
“Steal it from under their noses?” Healey’s eyes shone with excitement.
Russo stole his thunder. “Steady on, kid. We can’t lug an entire treasure trove out on our backs.”
Crouch grinned. “Maybe we can. We got into this for the action and the adventure, right? Well, let’s have a little of both.”
Alicia myles 1 - Aztec Gold Page 10